We All Have Our Time Machines
by webgeekist
Summary: What they had was complicated, but that didn't mean either of them would ever let it go.
1. Prologue

For the sake of my sanity, I'm releasing this monster into the wild in an attempt to shut my muses up. It'll be rough in places because I'm more concerned with getting my life back than producing the perfect piece of fiction. My pride won't let me publish it without giving it a once-over, though, so the errors should be kept to a minimum.

It's not a short one, and I have most of it written. That having been said, should anyone actually enjoy this thing, I refuse to promise timely updates. My apologies in advance.

Also, this story has a playlist. If you'd like to hear what I was listening to as I wrote each of these chapters, you can find all these songs on YouTube

**Part One**  
>Chapter 1: Krokodill – Johann Johannson<br>Chapter 2: Be Here Now - Ray LaMontagne  
>Chapter 3: I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Death Cab for Cutie<br>Chapter 4: Into The Fire – Thirteen Senses  
>Chapter 5: About Today – The National<p>

**Part Two**  
>Chapter 6: The Day The World Went Away (Still) - Nine Inch Nails<br>Chapter 7: UFO - One eskimO  
>Chapter 8: Breathe Me – Sia<br>Chapter 9: Keep It In The Family – Hybrid  
>Chapter 10: Beyond This Moment - Patrick O'Hearn<p>

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><p><strong>We All Have Our Time Machines<strong>

_**Prologue**_

* * *

><p><em>The B&amp;B was uncharacteristically quiet. From downstairs, she could vaguely hear the ticking of the old, resolute grandfather clock in the west corner of the parlor, marking off time as it had for years unknown. Her footsteps were soft as she walked along the upstairs hallway: the rubber of her sneakers muffled her footfalls, but there simply wasn't enough noise in the old house to mask them completely.<em>

_As her agile mind was prone to do, Myka Bering mentally counted the steps as she descended to the main floor. Despite the fact that there was absolutely no chance that one of them got up and walked off – though, she supposed, stranger things had happened - she performed the slightly OCD ritual every time._ _She reached the third step and heard its almost imperceptible creak, something that could only be noticed when one was alone, usually at night, and had only the grandfather clock for company._

_It was a sound she really only heard on nights such as this when, restless and unable to fall asleep, she gave up altogether and went book hunting through the shelves of the well-stocked study._

_The Warehouse team's trip to Russia had been exhausting, and not a little frightening. They'd come close to losing Artie, and even though she didn't always agree with his management methods, Myka had long ago begun looking upon him as a surrogate father figure. When they finally found him, huddled on the floor, he'd looked every bit as tortured as he deserved to look._

_But to add to that angst, when they finally found him, he was hunched over a shivering and incapacitated H.G. Wells._

_Despite every reason she had to list the woman as Public Enemy Number One, a bond of friendship had formed with the older woman. Perhaps it was hero worship –H.G. Wells was easily one of her favorite authors. The man (or woman, so it would seem) that dreamed of a future that shaped their present couldn't possibly be completely evil. And at length, that assumption would be proven correct – so correct that the Regents agreed with the Secret Service agent, and reinstated Wells' status as a Warehouse agent._

_It took Myka a few minutes, between her perusing and her musing, to find something suitable: it was an obscure little volume that she'd always meant to read but never had gotten around to. Excited by her fortunate find, she smiled and whirled back toward the staircase._

"_Which wondrous bit of literature have you chosen for your evening entertainment, my dear?"_

_She jumped, the book slipping from her grasp. She fumbled with it for a few seconds before regaining her grip on it, saving the battered text from the destructive hardwood floor below._

"_H.G.! I didn't know anyone was here!"_

"_Call me Helena, my dear," came the reply. "I believe that, after sharing a series of harrowing near-death experiences, two people need not address each other so formally."_

_The other woman was, herself, curled in a comfortable chair on the other side of the room, a warm-looking down throw draped over her shoulders. She held in her hands a newer, brighter-looking book, but placed it gently on the arm of the chair as she continued to speak. "And to the second, one doesn't typically make a lot of noise whilst reading."_

_Myka stood awkwardly for a moment, still a little stunned. Her eyes made it back to the book on Helena's chair, and recognized it instantly._

"_Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Really?"_

_The other woman shrugged, locks of her raven hair falling off her shoulders as she did. "This series, as I understand it, is what passes for great literature in the modern world. It is also astonishingly well-supplied by airport booksellers. I thought I would attempt it."_

_Myka shook her head. "I'm surprised that's what you decided to tackle first. There's so much that has been written in the last hundred years…and so much of it was influenced by you."_

"_Oh?"_

"_Oh, yes! The novels that were left behind as a legacy of your adventures and research helped shape a completely new genre of literature. I think you would love so many of those books."_

_The raven-haired agent glanced down to the book and frowned a little. "I asked the young caretaker at the Heathrow bookshop to point me to the finest literature of the 20th_ _century." She gestured with her hand toward the hardback. "This series was her immediate suggestion."_

_"Of course it was," the younger agent muttered, shaking her head. "You don't like it, then?"_

_The reply came with a shrug. "It possesses a passable discourse and, blessedly, presents the modern world somewhat as an outsider might view it, but it is not without its flaws. The premise is so very frivolous."_

"_Wait until you get to the next book. You'll want to throw it out a window."_

_A dark, carefully sculpted eyebrow came up. "Do the flaws in the plot become so intolerable?"_

_Myka took another look at the book and realized, judging by the crease in the spine, that the book was nearly finished. "I won't pretend the series is my favorite," she remarked, "but you've reached the point where the plot grows darker. If the goal of writing is to get you to empathize with the characters, this is where the author starts to really display her talents."_

_Helena settled back into her chair a bit, her left hand lightly tapping against her book's cover. "I didn't think you would be interested in children's literature."_

_The agent's green gaze went to the ceiling for a moment as she recalled a memory. When she found it, her gaze lowered again, and a smile came to her face. "I took an adolescent literature class as an elective in college. Harry Potter was a pretty dominant part of that course, and I guess I cared enough to continue reading the series. I have to say, though, you've reached the point where I'd draw the line."_

_The smile disappeared._

"_What comes next in the series isn't really fit for children."_


	2. Chapter 1

Now may be a good time to mention that this is a post-finale fix-it, but it has a broader point to make. I don't really like writing post-ep stories, but I guess we all do it from time to time.

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><p><strong>We All Have Our Time Machines<strong>

_**Part One: Those That Take Us Back**_

_**Chapter 1**_

* * *

><p>It was cold.<p>

The climate in South Dakota was arid, frigid, and inhospitable, a North American tribute to utter desolation. The state spent most of the year at or below freezing, leaving the scrub brush and strawgrass that passed for vegetation dry, brittle, and lifeless. At the turn of the season from summer to fall, without fail, the harsh and dust-filled wind carried on its tail the biting promise of a long winter: a natural warning, a vicious reminder of the bleakness to come.

It was a reminder Myka Bering had always welcomed – she _loved_ the winter. She loved endless snowball fights and curling up by a warm fire with a good book and the beauty of an otherwise unremarkable land covered in an endless blanket of pure white. Winters were magical to her as a child, a rare thing of beauty in the stories she escaped to that could be found in the real world. Desolation-in her surroundings and in her life – was nothing new, but her life as an agent assigned to Warehouse 13 was filled with such wonder and excitement that she'd grown to associate the peace she'd found with the land she'd found it in. And in the winter, that happiest place included the magic of snow.

She had run away from that wonderland once, shamed by her faults and shaken by her failures. She considered herself unworthy of that place she called home, and ran back to a life she had gratefully left behind in self-imposed penance for mistakes too grave to forgive. It was cold there, as well, and without the joy of the Warehouse to keep her heart warm she had discovered instead how bleak a winter without magic can be. When she finally returned to South Dakota, when she finally emerged from her personal prison, she did so with the intention to leave the pain behind.

She never expected that she would be made to watch, helpless, as nearly everything she cared about was obliterated around her.

She stood at her bedroom window at Leena's Bed & Breakfast, gazing out on the dry earth between the old house and the ruins of Warehouse 13, searching for something in the familiar terrain that could lend her hope. The glass frosted over as the temperature dipped, and despite the heat in the house and the winter clothing she wore, she shivered. Her home was a wasteland, and the events of the day left her soul just as barren.

To her left was a bookshelf, filled to near-collapse with volumes of her favorite stories. In times of trouble, those treasured tales were her best escape, and in that very windowsill she would sit for hours and reread the same stories again and again. She dared not look to those books for solace now: her beloved collection would now serve only as a painful reminder of what she'd lost.

The living area below, filled with so many memories of happier times, would be no better. There were remnants of the house's lost occupants everywhere.

And beyond the front door, out in the normal world, all those specters of the things she'd failed to protect would follow her. She would see every person she's ever lost to her own mistakes in the faces of others, would hear their voices from across coffee shops and streets. She would find them in the stories she read, in the movies she watched, and in the very history of mankind.

This time, there was nowhere to run.

She was desperate for a task, or perhaps a target, but there was nothing left to do except grieve. There was nothing to do but stand at her window and wait for the shock of it all to wear off. She wanted to cry – _needed_ to cry – but couldn't. Steve, Mrs. Frederic, the Warehouse…their losses deserved tears.

_Helena_ deserved tears.

She may have been able to function, at least, absent that. She might have been able to join Pete as he scoured the remains of the warehouse for clues or absolution, or Artie as he studied his watch to figure out why it wasn't working, or Claudia as she beat herself up trying to make sense of Steve's last message, or Leena as she busily tidied the immaculate inn with a haunted look in her eyes. Instead, her knees were locked in place, her gaze was fixed outward, and her tired mind was at the mercy of all her harrowing memories.

She keenly remembered Claudia's mournful wail when she discovered Steve's body, the awkward way he was draped over the chair in death, the hollow look in his open eyes. Her pain at losing a friend was eclipsed by the cloak of grief Claudia wore, and until the end, it had been her desire for retribution, her determination to save others in danger that had kept her from falling apart.

There was nothing left to stop that now.

For the terrible memory of the final seconds of the Warehouse, for the final seconds of H.G. Wells, there might never be solace, not even in the memories of better times. They had all turned from moments of peace to poignant foreshadows of the tragedies to come.

The sound of a loud bang downstairs brought her back across the plains and into the present – it was the sound of Leena's front door slamming against the small table in the foyer as someone entered with far too much force. Some of her elite federal agent training kicked in, and she was reaching for her service weapon without another sound.

The next – frantic, panicked shouts - had her taking four stairs at a time to get down to the main floor.

"Claudia!"

Pete was right in front of her, his own sidearm drawn. Her mind processed this quickly: both of them had left their Teslas alone, reaching instead for the deadliest weapons in their meager arsenal. It was an important detail.

She found a more important at the foot of the stair.

There, the youngest member of their team and their landlady bent over a prostrate Artie, but Artie didn't seem…all there. In fact, he seemed half there and half somewhere else, his form buzzing like a badly-tuned television channel.

"He tried it again. I told him not to! He did it anyway!"

Myka looked to Pete, who looked to her.

"Is it safe to stick anything in there?" she asked.

In response, her partner reached over and grabbed an umbrella out of a stand. "Only one way to find out," he mumbled.

Myka knew Pete had never fenced before in his life, but somehow he managed to knock the object in Artie's hands away with all the grace of a man whose best friend was an epee. Instantly, whatever was happening to their elder employer ceased.

And instantly, Artie began his protests.

"What are you doing, you careless oaf? I'm about to use that!"

"About to? Artie." Claudia leaned over him. Myka could see the worry in her face and the stress in her posture. "You used it. You _were_ using it. And when you decided to do your best impression of the Invisible Man, Zorro over there swung away to save the day."

"Invisible man? What are you talking about?"

Myka stepped forward. Artie glanced at her hand and narrowed his eyes, and it was only then that she realized her gun was still out. "When we got down here, you were on the floor, and you'd been there for several seconds." She reached to her belt, holstered her gun. "You had the watch in your hand."

"I was? I did?" He looked around to everyone's faces. Myka imagined it was for confirmation. "What was I doing?"

"Blinking," was Claudia's dry response.

Myka and Leena simultaneously bent down to help him up, but when he reached his feet he nearly collapsed again. It took the combined strength of two secret service agents, a mysterious innkeeper, and a child genius to keep him from collapsing back to the floor.

"This one was a bad one," Pete mumbled. He tossed the watch on a nearby table and helped everyone else ease their friend to the sofa in the study. The older man sank heavily into the cushions.

"I'm calling Doc Calder."

"You'll do no such thing! I'll be fine! We just have to figure out what's wrong with the watch." He sighed, his hand going to his head. "Don't know why it's being so damn stubborn," he grumbled.

"You know, Christmas lights aren't usually this lippy."

Artie started to spit out a retort, but Claudia held up her hand. "Save it - you're not talking me out of it this time."

The redhead ran out of the room before their boss could protest, but Myka noted that his words died before they ever passed his lips. Even Artie had reached the point where he couldn't deny reality anymore.

As it dawned on her that the man's concession meant he too had lost all hope, she glanced at Pete. That detail had not escaped his notice, and his shoulders slumped a little more under the weight.

Her heart would have hurt if it weren't already numb.

It had only been fourteen hours. To Myka – to everyone left behind – those fourteen hours might as well have been eternity.

Artie had provided the first glimmer of hope: a gold pocketwatch, left to him by James McPherson, whose artifact properties were meant to be used in an hour of need.

"Hopefully," Artie had muttered, "An hour will be enough."

He'd turned the dial back.

And then he did it again.

And again.

_And again._

His two agents realized that something wasn't quite right about the pocketwatch after the man had successfully imitated a frozen video game character for a full fifteen seconds. Pete slapped the watch out of his hands, earning Artie's ire for the first of many times that day. It made a hollow clinking sound as it met the scorched, bare surface of the warehouse floor. As Pete described what had happened, Myka turned back to stare at the last place she'd seen H.G. Wells alive. Hope, as quickly as it had come, was shrinking back into the darkness.

She closed her eyes against the deep, crushing hurt that welled in her chest, stubbornly stuffing her hands into her pockets in an attempt to remain rational. Her fingers grazed something metal with hard edges. Forgotten in the rush to find Sykes and rescue its owner, safe in Myka's pocket, was Helena's locket. She pulled it back into the open air and held it in her palm for a moment, letting her thumb brush across its face, before taking the chain in hand and draping it around her own neck. It hit her shoulders heavily, as if it carried with it the weight of the destruction it had survived.

Artie hadn't given up. He'd shut himself up in the B&B's basement trying to crack the mystery of MacPherson's Watch, but it hadn't been enough. Three times he'd tried activating the watch, and three times the watch had reacted poorly to his efforts. He began to worry if the warehouse's destruction – or the act of batting the watch out of his hands repeatedly - had affected it somehow. With each attempt, the watch's effect became more volatile. With each attempt, each member of the team became more and more withdrawn. There was no more hope to lose - their grief had begun feeding on their very will to live.

Her hand went to the chain around her neck, followed the cold braid of metal down until her fingers reached the locket resting gently over her heart. She gripped it hard, as if it alone could sustain her.

Artie's face was finally gaining some color back when Claudia came back into the room. "She heard about…everything. She's already at the airport, boarding a plane as we speak. She'll be here in two."

Myka studied the younger woman. Of the five of them, she was the one whose face showed the most wear. She'd managed to maintain her humorous manner of speaking, but Myka had been surprised to discover it wasn't a mannerism intended to be humorous. There was no mirth in her eyes or voice when she spoke. There was no innocence left.

It was something else they'd all lost. It was something else to mourn.

"Pete, Myka…go pick her up. And while you're out, pick up Jane. She's due back in about that much time, too."

Pete made a small noise of protest, but Myka merely nodded. She needed a task. Without a word, she left the room to retrieve her keys and coat.

The frigid day cast a grey light inside the small parlor off the foyer, where her coat hung just inside. She paused for a moment and took a long look at the room, at the warm and worn chairs, at the dining room table beyond. Once upon a time, it was one of the warmer rooms in the house.

There was almost always someone in that room, before. There was life and love and fun. She would frequently sit and read in the chair facing outward, the one with the full view of the wall of windows that led to the back garden, or Claudia would plop down at the table and tap away at a keyboard. Steve liked to take a seat beside Claudia and netsurf on his iPad while his best friend worked. Even Pete would sink down into the comfortable chair in the corner and play video games on his PSP from time to time.

Even Helena favored the room. During the daytime, she would choose to curl into one of the parlor chairs instead of retreating to her spot in the study to continue reading the next in a long list of book recommendations, a cup of tea on the table beside her, music playing softly from the bookshelf stereo system.

Music. It felt foreign to her, now. But once, in a time and place far from their bleak state, there had almost always been music in that room, as well.

_"What in Heaven's name is that atrocious racket?"_

_Myka pulled her nose out of a well-worn copy of The Portrait of Dorian Grey as the newest member of their team arrived at the table for breakfast. Claudia, per her usual morning routine, was seated at the table, her over-labeled laptop open and playing its usual breakfast playlist. Myka found the girl's music tastes a little different from her own, but if the tracks had ever bothered her, she couldn't remember it._

_Nonetheless, H.G. Wells stood on the opposite side of the table, backlit by the morning light streaming through the east windows. The sunbeams nearly masked the irritation on the older woman's face, but what could be missed in the brightness of the sun was implied by the hands slapped over her ears._

_Claudia waved her bearclaw in the air. "Foo Fighters?"_

_The inventor's eyes, narrowed by irritation, scrunched a little. Myka recognized that look: the older woman wore it like a favorite shirt around modern slang and colloquialisms, not yet having mastered the lingo of the 21__st__ century. "What is a...Foo?"_

_It was Pete, his mouth half-full of donut, that answered._

_"Foo Fighters were those little glowy lightning ball things that World War II fighter pilots saw in the sky all the time. It's, like, eighth grade history. How could you not know about that?"_

_All his f sounds came out sounding like h sounds, but the point was clearly made. Helena's eyes lost their inquisitive crinkle as she turned to face Pete, taking on the amused but borderline malevolent look born only of the highest irritation._

_"Oh," he mumbled, shrinking into the counter. "Right."_

_"Foo Fighters is a band, Helena. A music group." The glare softened a bit as the other woman fit the new information into her mental catalog of modern things. The newest member of their team had to do that a lot: stop, process, continue. As they all learned to live and work with one another, the meticulously observant agent found it fascinating to watch her new friend reason through things so simple and commonplace in the modern world that the rest of them took it for granted. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be in Helena's shoes - and would never want to find out firsthand - but her predicament served to remind Myka that the Warehouse didn't own all the stock in endless wonder._

_"They call this music? At what point in the last century did the human species become tone deaf?"_

_Myka chuckled, but Claudia and Pete both looked hurt. "Don't dis the Foos. They're the soundtrack to my life! Also, this band is the best thing about Nirvana."_

_The raven-haired genius cocked her head. "Claudia, Dear, I'm not sure you've reached that state of enlightenment yet, and I'm certain that when you do, this..." she gestured at the girl's laptop. "...noise will not be a part of it."_

_"Nirvana. Also a band," Myka supplied._

_Helena huffed. "Really, how is one meant to follow the course of a common conversation if every noun and adjective in the English language is also a reference to modern culture? The point is lost so easily."_

_"Oooh, I love that show!"_

_Pete picked a bad time to rejoin the conversation._

_The displaced Victorian threw her hands in the air and made an exasperated sound. "The English language is dead!" she declared, then turned and left for her room._

There had almost always been music in that room. Now, with the specter of death looming over it, the room looked like it hadn't been used in years.

"Let's go," she said to Pete. Before he had time to squeak out his answer, she was already through the door.


	3. Chapter 2

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

_**Part One: Those That Take Us Back**_

_**Chapter 2**_

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><p><em>"Helena?"<em>

_Myka found her friend and fellow agent sitting in the study, gazing out the retractable glass windows of their home at nothing in particular. In the two weeks since she'd been reinstated, Myka had frequently found the woman in that very spot, reading. This occasion was different – there was a book in Helena's hand, but both volume and limb lay forgotten in her lap. Her face wore something separate from the confident, near arrogant mask that was typical of H.G. Wells. The expression was softer. Vulnerable._

_"Yes, my dear?"_

_The older agent turned her head toward the sound of her name. Whatever it was that the Myka's keen attention to detail had picked up on in that moment before was slipping away, but in the warm light of the fading sun, the lines on Helena's face simply couldn't be hidden. Her purpose forgotten, the younger woman took a seat next to her friend. "Are you all right?"_

"_Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"_

_Helena donned bravado expertly, but this time it was easy enough to see through. "You know you can talk to me…right?"_

_For a long moment, black eyes looked cold, and Myka feared she may have overstepped some sacred boundary. Their friendship had been easy to strike despite the many times she'd shoved a gun in the Englishwoman's face, but it was still a new and fledgling thing._

_Her worry was unnecessary – after a moment, the cool mask cracked. "There is nothing particularly notable about the landscape here."_

_Confused, Myka frowned. "Okaaaay…"_

"_I find I quite like it." Her companion turned her gaze back to the windows. "I like this place. My travels in this brave new world have shown me wonders the likes of which even I couldn't have imagined in my time, and these wonders are such a part of everyday life that I sometimes find it…overwhelming."_

_Myka couldn't imagine what it would be like to wake up in an unfamiliar world of unfathomable technology, and though she'd given thought to the fact that it must be unsettling to the newest member of the Warehouse team, the woman had handled it so unflappably well that it had been easy to assume that the mind of H.G. Wells was simply so bright and flexible that the future was just that easy to make sense of._

_She was unsettled herself to learn that assumption had been at least partially incorrect._

"_I find this desolate terrain and this classically decorated house a small comfort, actually. In this modern world of convenience run amok, this is a place where progress has been limited by geography and need."_

_Helena pulled her gaze away from the windows and met Myka's eyes._

"_I was reflecting on that when you joined me. I'm sorry if my expression startled you."_

"_I'm sorry," came the reply. "I didn't realize."_

"_Nonsense, my dear. I would much rather converse with you."_

_A strange giddiness settled around Myka's heart at that comment, but the weight of an object in her hands reminded her of her purpose._

_"I...uh...got you a present." She said. "For your birthday, if you'd like. I know it's still a few months off, but..."_

_Her slender fingers held a carefully wrapped box, barely smaller than a Farnsworth, adorned with a simple bow. She presented the gift to the other woman, who placed it carefully atop the closed book in her lap._

_"A present? Myka, I'm flattered. You really shouldn't have gone through the trouble."_

_She shrugged. "Well, honestly, it wasn't just my idea. Open it."_

_When the paper came away, Helena discovered a clear plastic box with a flat metal and glass item inside it. The thing was hardly bigger than the palm of her hand, and had no immediately discernible purpose._

_Dark eyes expressed a mixture of excitement and confusion. "It wasn't necessary to give me a gift at all, but...what exactly is an iPod?"_

_Myka laughed lightly. "It's a music player. Well, it's more than a music player, I guess. It can also play movies and surf the internet and…umm, I guess that part's not important. But here." She opened the case and pulled the device out, then turned it on. "It's controlled by a touch screen. Claudia and I picked through our music libraries for stuff we thought you'd like, and made you some playlists that should get you up to speed on modern music. See?"_

_Helena stared at the screen as if studying some particularly amazing artifact. When Myka tapped on the 1960s playlist and a list of song titles came up, the curious new owner of the device followed the example and tapped a song at random. Her eyes widened and her face split into a delighted grin when the device started playing music._

_"Amazing," Helena whispered._

_"You, uh...you don't have to listen to it on this crappy little speaker. There are headphones in the box. They plug into this hole at the bottom."_

_Myka leaned back a little and watched the woman beside her as she began to familiarize herself with the new toy. She still held the iPod out delicately, as if afraid she would break it. And, maybe, she was a little dubious. She had, after all, just confessed that this world's technology was a bit much at times._

"_It's a very useful and simple device. Claudia likes to rave that Apple makes the most user-friendly gadgets out there."_

_Helena gave Myka a wide, genuine smile. "It's a wonder. Everything I'd hoped for in the devices of the future." To illustrate her understanding, she plugged the headphones in, stuck one in her ear like she'd been wearing them for years, then navigated back to the playlist view to select something chronologically closer to her tastes._

_Then, suddenly, she grabbed Myka's hand and squeezed._

"_Thank you. Really. This is incredibly thoughtful of the two of you."_

_Warmed both literally and figuratively by the contact, she returned it. "You're very welcome, Helena."_

* * *

><p>Myka's iPod sat in a cupholder, connected but mute. Pete, usually the first to reach for tunes on a long drive, made no move to do so. It was as if, in the last day, the music had died.<p>

He fidgeted in his seat a little after the first forty miles, a sure sign that the silence had grown too long and large for his tolerance. He would _talk_ soon enough, and on subjects she wasn't really ready to discuss.

There was one conversation she knew they needed to have, and it was the one thing about the last two days she wasn't sure she would ever be ready to talk about.

"I never forgave her," he said without preamble.

Her eyes closed briefly as the words sank in, as a heart that had already taken too much abuse for the day took another tiny blow. "Pete…" The rest of her words died before she gave them voice. Hating H.G. Wells was his prerogative. If he couldn't find a way to forgive her after everything they'd been through, nothing she said would help…and, after everything they'd been through, she found herself without the energy to fight.

"No, Mykes…I mean I never told her I'd forgiven her. And I feel bad about that now."

But he had given her a hug. A thank you. It had been so out of character he'd struck the silver-tongued woman speechless. Myka had thought, in the brief moment between being rid of Sykes and finding what he'd left behind, that his actions and Artie's lack of protest meant they would all finally be okay.

"I mean, I was angry with her. I blamed her when Kelly left me, and I blamed her for…you. But in the woods, when she agreed with me and told us to destroy the coin to thwart Sykes…I didn't want to do it because I hated her, Myka. I didn't want to do it at all. I just thought it was the right thing to do."

She felt her eyes prickle with the promise of tears, but none were to be found. "I know, Pete."

She wanted to tell him she didn't want to talk about it. She tried, but the words were reluctant to leave her lips, because though it hurt so very much to think about everything that had happened, some small part of her was grateful to hear Helena's name spoken as anything other than a curse.

"Evil H.G. never would have offered herself up like that, and then…" He stopped talking, then sighed. "I guess anyone would be a little cracked after a hundred years by themselves, you know? She probably shouldn't have been able to even function after McPsycho brought her back out of the Bronze sector. That she adapted as quickly as she did was a miracle. I…I guess I just wish we had all realized that sooner."

Unbidden, the image of Helena's face as she spoke her final words overtook Myka's senses, and she was struck anew by the heavy fists of loss and regret. The truck swerved a little before she could regain control over herself.

"Are you all right?"

"Pete…I..."

In her time away from the Warehouse, in Colorado, the bulk of her time had been spent cataloging, filing, and reorganizing everything in her father's bookshop. It had been a menial and mindless task, and it allowed her to focus on something completely unrelated to her mistakes.

It worked until the day, about two weeks later, when she came across a battered copy of _Modern Utopia._

Memories of Yellowstone ravaged her, and she spent the rest of the day stuck in the moments of those moments where Helena had threatened to condemn the world for being less than she'd written about.

"Were you two…you know?"

Myka flinched. She was now _positive_ she wasn't ready for this conversation, and where her partner's persistence was typically something she could appreciate, in that moment she thought of it as a curse.

"No." Her voice cracked on the short, simple word, and her voice stayed hoarse. "It was never like that."

"But it could have been, if you'd wanted it. She'd been with women before."

She looked into the distance for a moment, searching for answers she'd chased for a year. "I'm not sure about that," she answered. "She was masterful at keeping people off-balance, you know? And it was a game with you. I think she loved knocking you over with sheer wit."

"But Mykes, she didn't really have to lie to do that. Let's be honest, the woman experienced a lot. Why not…_that_?"

It had crossed her mind many times before, and had been analyzed at length during her fugue in Colorado Springs. The idea that the pain she'd felt at Helena's betrayal was amplified by the fact that she'd fallen for the inventor a little harder than she should have was something she had berated herself for many times over. She also suspected the heartbreak she felt in her absence now was because she cared for Helena in a way that transcended mere friendship.

She couldn't, however, put a name to the storm of feelings that beat upon her soul.

"It doesn't really matter now."

The opportunity to define that thing was lost, as was the chance to find a companion in the strange space she occupied.

"I know she loved you," he said.

"And how would you know that?"

Pete sighed a little harder than he should have, a rare sign of irritation tinged with disappointment. "At the time, maybe I thought she was just a really good actress. I mean, I didn't sense the crazy until she had her tongue halfway down my throat—"

Her sharp gasp came through her teeth, sounding more like a hiss. "Not funny, Pete."

He paused. "Sorry. Anyway, now I know better. She didn't have to keep the act up once she was reinstated. She didn't have to be anything more than just polite to any of us, but she was more than that toward you. She had what she needed, so why bother with the lovesick puppy routine?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him frown a little. "She was obviously crazy about you. You could see it in the way she acted around you, the way she smiled at you whenever you were in the room or someone just_ mentioned_ you and she thought no one was looking. Myka...I know she was in love with you."

He let the statement hang there. Myka frowned as her emotions tried to adjust to that idea.

"And Mykes.. I think you loved her back."

"Oh don't be - " She wanted to say he was being ridiculous, but the truth was she wasn't sure he _was_ being ridiculous. She'd dwelled mostly on all the bad things Helena had done, on how the clever woman had fooled them all while orchestrating the end of the world, on how poorly she'd assessed the threat that was H.G. Wells. She'd reasoned out at length just how masterfully she, Myka Ophelia Bering, had been suckered. And after Yellowstone, in the wake of her greatest failure, she'd concluded that whatever connection existed between them, however far it went, was nothing more than a clever fabrication. Helena was more than cunning enough to manipulate her feelings to fit her needs. Whatever was there, it was all a fabrication. It was all part of a plan.

Except that it wasn't.

As her own harshest critic, Myka was willing to give H.G. Wells all the credit for being an evil genius and none to herself for being at least partially right about the woman behind the madness. In the months since her return to South Dakota, events had cast those criticisms into the harsher light of truth. She'd discovered that her other great failure - Sam's death - was caused by an artifact and orchestrated from the inside, both of which were tactical variables she could never have accounted for at the time. She'd learned that Helena felt remorse, and probably hadn't spent _every_ waking moment plotting the end of the world. She may have actually enjoyed the company of the Warehouse crew. She may have enjoyed the new books and new music and her damned iPod.

In the hours prior to the destruction of the Warehouse, H.G. Wells had managed to prove over and over again that she was, indeed, a good and noble soul, and in doing so had vindicated Myka's faith. She proved it one last time by laying her own life down to save those she could.

Myka hadn't yet reprocessed everything. She hadn't reconciled her old conclusions with those new contradictory facts.

"You don't have to say anything, though, you know? I know that has to be complicated. But it was written all over her face when she was near you, Myka. She would have torn the world apart for you."

The response was a hollow laugh. "She tried that."

"Yeah." Pete shrugged. "But you know what I think? I think that if it had been anyone else out on there trying to talk her down, we would all be meat popsicles right now. It says to me that she thought you were the one thing in this world worth saving, and that you meant enough to H.G. that she gave up what was essentially her life's work so _you_ would live." He paused again, tilting his head a little. "I guess she's done that twice now. Really, Myka, why else would someone do that if not for love?"

Pete had never, ever been on Helena's side.

Until now.

Myka said nothing in response, but a set of traitorous tears finally slipped free. It was all the acknowledgment Pete would need, and all he would get.

The truth was, she had long ago written off that…_thing_ between them as an illusion, and she'd done her best ever since to swallow the pain she felt whenever H.G. Wells was mentioned. But in the end, Helena never reached that grand ending she sought. She found instead a stranger placed in her body and her spirit secured in a sphere. For all the time she'd spent berating herself for her gullibility, Myka had never stopped to think about all the meticulously crafted plans Helena _willingly _wasted as she dropped the gun and the trident. She had never pushed far enough past the hurt and betrayal that had brought her to basically point a gun to her own head to ask why Helena hadn't pulled the trigger.

The truth was complicated.

Rapid City Regional airport was better than a small town terminal, but not by much. The terminal building had a handful of gates with jet service, and one way in. Pete and Myka spent a great deal of time in that airport, the starting point and final destination of every adventure they'd been on since joining the Warehouse.

It was just past sunset when they arrived at the terminal, the dying day leaving behind brilliant colors across the flat plains and wide sky. Doctor Calder and Jane were standing outside the austere terminal building, ready to get back to a place that no longer existed.

Pete got out of the car the moment it was brought to a stop and wrapped his mother into a tight hug. Jane had tears in her eyes, most likely relieved to see her son even though she already knew he'd survived.

Myka let the Lattimers have their moment and helped the doctor load her bags into the back of the Highlander. Jane – having arrived in Hong Kong with nothing – came back just as emptyhanded. Vanessa followed her to the driver's side and placed her hand on the back door, but stopped before getting in to place a gentle hand on the agent's arm.

"How are you?"

She felt herself wince, both at the contact and the question.

"Not okay," she answered.

It wasn't long before everyone was in the car and Myka had it steered back onto the highway.

"Update me," Jane said a few minutes later. "What's been happening?"

"Well, we lost the Warehouse," Myka muttered, but not low enough for it to be completely under her breath.

"Yeah…Mom, I was so relieved when you called us. After Mrs. F, I thought…maybe…"

The Regent winced. "The Ramadi Shackle doesn't bind the Regent wearing it to the Warehouse like it does the Caretaker, but…"

Jane held up her wrist. Myka wasn't surprised, all things considered, to see that the shackle wasn't there, but she was surprised to see the scalded skin where it had once been.

"That looks painful," she said.

"Vanessa saw to it when I landed. It's fine."

"What happened to the shackle?" Pete's voice was quiet, and Myka could guess why – if she found a mark like that on her mother's wrist, they'd be on the way to the hospital. To answer her son's question, Jane produced the metal band, which was unlatched and rusted.

"That can't be good," he replied.

"Claudia mentioned a watch," Doctor Calder said after a moment. "She said something about Artie trying to use it to fix everything, but that he was experiencing some strange side effects."

"Yeah, the watch isn't working." Pete shifted in his seat so that he'd face backward as he spoke. "Every time he tries to use it, it does something weird to him."

"What is the watch supposed to do, exactly?"

He faced his mother again. "He hasn't really said, but he did mention something about being used in an hour of need."

"An hour…" Through the rearview mirror, Myka watched as Jane lifted her hand to her chin. "That makes me think that, whatever it was supposed to do, it should have been done within an hour of the Warehouse's destruction. That it failed to do anything…"

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."

Myka resisted the urge to turn and stare at Vanessa. Pete, thankfully, was fully capable of showing enough confusion for both of them.

"I'm sure we're all suffering from it a little, but what does that have to do with the artifact?"

It clicked for Myka seconds later. "Not us. The watch. Artifacts have personalities, right? Quirks? And they're affected by negative energy."

"It makes the most sense. If the artifact had been safely on Artie's person during the explosion, then damage is out of the question. The erratic behavior wouldn't be so different from a veteran experiencing flashbacks."

"Maybe, but how would we cure an artifact? It's not like we can put it into therapy."

"Usually, PTSD patients are helped along by a friend or someone familiar."

Pete scratched his chin. "Sooo…another artifact? Another survivor?"

"That would be ideal."

"Nothing survived, Vanessa." Jane's voice was soft and sad. "There's nothing left of the Warehouse except the floor. We don't have anything left that has ever even been in the building except ourselves."

Myka felt the heavy weight of hopelessness settle over her again, and her hand went instinctively to the back of her neck. The chain – Helena's chain – felt warm against her fingertips, reminding her yet again of everything they'd lost. Her fingers ran down the chain to the locket at the end and she grasped it tightly, desperately, as if the painful memories were inside and her grip was all that was keeping them at bay.

Her eyes widened, her lips parted enough for a sharp gasp.

"What kind of object would work?"

Vanessa shrugged. "Almost anything. Something that the watch has been in contact with before would be best, but if anything survived the explosion, it could be enough."

Her grip over the locket loosened, but her hand stayed over it. Its warmth was a comfort and the final glimmer of hope in the rapidly dying day.

"I think I know where we can find another artifact," she said.


	4. Chapter 3

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

_**Part One: Those That Take Us Back**_

_**Chapter 3**_

* * *

><p>"What were you <em>thinking<em>?"

Artie's voice was never shrill. Them man was a lot of things – surly, ill-tempered, gruff – but never in the three years Myka had known him was shrill an adjective she could attach to her boss. It was that high pitch, along with the volume of it, that made Myka cringe just a little even though she'd done nothing wrong.

Only two things – two _people_ – had ever sent him into such a rage. The truth was she hadn't thought much about the locket around her neck because there hadn't really been time. In the space between finding it on the floor in the basement of a Hong Kong restaurant and…well, everything else…the only consideration she'd given the locket was the pain she felt at its owner's absence.

She'd placed it around her own neck because it, like Myka, didn't have anywhere else to go. It had seemed a natural thing to do at the time.

Artie, plainly, disagreed.

"I found it in Hong Kong. I'd meant to give it back to…"

She couldn't bring herself to say her name aloud – not yet – but the redness that was quick to flush her supervisor's face demonstrated that the name didn't need to be said.

No matter what she did in the past – good or bad – she was certain nobody else would flare his temper the way the mere suggestion of H.G. Wells did.

"Need I remind you that the pretty little trinket around your neck right now sat next to Lizzie Borden's locket in the Escher vault for a hundred years before it came back out into daylight? Personal effects get locked up for a reason, Myka! It never occurred to you that the locket might already _be_ an artifact?"

"Hey, ease off, Grumpelstiltskin. H.G. wore that thing every day she was an agent here. It didn't occur to any of us…not even you, or you'd have snagged it."

The older man turned to his younger ward with the same fury he'd thrown at Myka still armed and active. "Don't tell me to ease off! I'm not being irrational here!"

"You've been in a mood since you came out of your pocketwatch-induced spaz attack." Claudia shrugged. "So the locket is an artifact. Now what?"

The old man gave the young woman an intense, incredulous stare for a long and uncomfortable moment. Myka expected him to lash out, fire her, or give her three years of inventory. Her heart dropped as she remembered that the last of the possible punishments wasn't actually possible anymore.

Instead, Artie's face softened into the closest she'd ever seen to sorrow on his face, and she realized with another hard thud of her heart that he had reached the same end she had.

"I suppose we're lucky you picked it up at all."

The words were spoken in his usual harrumph, but she took it as a scattershot apology and nodded.

"Let me see the damned thing."

Her hand went to her neck, to the chain, and her fingers wound around it. She understood that by _see the damned thing_, he meant, _give me the damned thing_. Instinctively, the curled fingers formed a fist and her hand refused to move.

"Artie…I…"

His eyebrows flew toward his hairline, but his eyes were still wild with anger. Even though she couldn't finish saying it, she knew he and everyone else in the room knew exactly what she was about to say.

Jane suddenly appeared in Myka's vision, rounding her supervisor to take control of the situation – to take control of _her_. She really, really respected the woman, but she took a step back for every step the older woman took forward, anyway.

"You can't keep that locket, Myka," she said gently. "Artie's right. We don't just lock things in the Escher Vault for no reason."

"I thought you kept the personal effects of the people we've bronzed in there." She turned her attention back to Artie, directing her next statement more at him than anyone. "She was never so evil that everything she touched turned into an artifact!"

Jane's kind eyes winced a little at the harsh retort, but the Regent still stepped closer. "Sometimes, it's not the person that creates the artifact so much as the circumstances. Look, you're a rational person. The kind of pain Agent Wells was in…there are few people that can understand what it's like to lose someone. To lesser extents, you and I both have some concept of what she must have felt. But to lose a child?"

Jane's gaze darted to the left, to where Pete stood, and Myka felt a wave of guilt rising to her throat. So much had happened, and so much of it terrible, that the less terrible things weren't even being considered. Jane's job as a regent had placed them all in danger, but her guilt was likely the danger it had placed her son in.

"Sykes made that threat, and by fear alone, Myka, I swear it might have been enough to make an impression on something. But my son is an adult who has made his own decisions and lived his own life. I can only imagine it, but to have lost him when he was a child would have destroyed me. Agent Wells was remarkable in every way. Even, perhaps, in her grief."

The logic wasn't lost on her - of _course_ it was possible that the locket was an artifact – but her reluctance to relinquish it was not a byproduct of an artifact's influence: it was an entirely emotional response to an entirely emotional situation.

Steve had been found as Sykes had left him. Claudia had something physical to mourn, even if just for a little while. Mrs. Frederic's mummified corpse had been the last of the blows dealt to them that day, but it was still something physical they could make peace with. On a day of unhappy endings, closure was as close to a gift as any of them would get.

Those losses that had hit Myka hardest offered no such mercy. There had been too many apologies left unsaid, and too many other words made to die before their time. There was nothing left of her dearest friend, of her happiest place…perhaps nothing tangible left of the magical life she'd led for the last three years. Nothing remained that could give her the closure she would need to pick up the pieces of her devastated life.

Nothing, save the locket around her neck.

That realization combined with Jane's words to shake Myka's fragile composure to dust. As the barriers fell away, the flood of her pent-up sorrow slowly consumed her every sense. In her last lucid moment, she thought to escape, to run, to find some dark and silent place to shatter in solitude.

Myka was only aware that she hadn't quite made it to her room when the losses finally overwhelmed her and she broke apart.

* * *

><p><em>Myka stole furtive glances to the item at the top of the stack of shelves every few minutes, just to be safe. Ever since her incident with Lewis Carroll's mirror, she hadn't really been fond of the Studio 54 Disco Ball. Granted, it had helped pull her out of that awful place, but it had also sent her there in the first place. The mirror, as well as its enraged, homicidal occupant, had thankfully been sent to the dark vault long ago.<em>

_She'd still managed to avoid that particular aisle ever since, and until Helena had allowed her smart mouth to get the better of her during a morning briefing, Artie had been more than understanding._

"_Helena." She tried – and failed, to her irritation – to keep all traces of her ill-ease out of her voice. "What exactly possessed you to call Artie out this morning?"_

"_Well, he was wrong, my dear," the other woman replied smoothly. "I may have misjudged how poorly he would receive that observation."_

_Calling Artie's reaction a "poor reception" was a little like calling Chernobyl a small gas leak. Thanks to his newfound awareness of his inferior intellectual state, the recently-reinstated Warehouse agent had been sentenced to three weeks of inventory._

_And Myka, as her "senior agent," would be there to supervise it all._

_On the bright side, as her fellow prisoner was quick to point out, there would be no shortage of good music to listen to. What she hadn't quite realized what that it would be a few playlists before the words "music" and "good" started to belong in the same sentence. She'd put up with the ragtime-style hits of the nineteen-teens for six hours straight already (and, really, how did they find so many recordings from an era without decent recording technology?), and she was ready for blues or swing or anything that didn't sound like it came from a poorly-tuned saloon upright._

"_I hope that observation was worth losing your gold star."_

_As she turned her attention back to Helena, she noticed how genuinely distraught she seemed at having lost the silly award and smiled._

"_Just what do you find so amusing?"_

"_You. And that fictional gold star."_

"_Well, gold was a great deal more valuable in my time."_

_At that, Myka began to fully laugh._

"_Metallic, star-shaped stickers are used as a cheap reward system for very young children. When I was in first grade, my teacher would put a star on a chart next to our name for every day we turned in __our homework, and at the end of the week, if we had five stars, she'd give us a piece of candy."_

"_Ah." Her head tilted as she checked off the next item on her inventory sheet. "So, what Artie actually awarded was a prize designed to keep six year olds in check."_

"_Yup."_

"_Well, then, pointing out that he was incorrect about the purpose of the Antikythera Mechanism was very much worth the cost."_

_She turned back to the shelves with a long smirk._

"_And it also explains why Peter was so disappointed he did not receive one."_

"_It does," she said between chuckles, "doesn't it!"_

_Ragtime, she supposed, fit the jovial mood the pair had found in a very Charlie Chaplin, slapstick way, but she breathed a physical sigh of relief when something resembling a 12-piece band started playing The Charleston. By the way her fellow agent pulled pulled back and tilted her head, Myka wondered if she wasn't the only one happy to hear a second instrument._

"_Oh! My! There's a bit of complication to this tune. What is this style called, then?"_

"_It's the beginnings of swing music during what we refer to as the Big Band era."_

"_The Big Band era…" Her companion began nodding her head side to side in time with the music. "I rather like it. It's far more complex than the entertainment available in my time, but something you may still dance to."_

"_Yeah, that was sort of the idea back then. Here in America, you couldn't drink at the time. People needed something to do, I guess."_

"_What?" Helena turned to face her. "For Heaven's sake, why would anyone in their right mind prohibit alcohol?"_

"_Well, to be completely technical, it was just the manufacture and sale of alcohol that was prohibited, but I guess it's the same thing. There was a group of people – political lobbyists, really – that convinced politicians it would break the power of the post-World War 1 German-dominated brewing industry and eliminate the political corruption that took place in bars. They masked it all as a service to humanity, as a religious edict that people should follow more moral lives, but their motives were all about the breaking and taking of power."_

"_Since I've enjoyed numerous glasses of very lovely wine since I came out of the bronze, I assume that American politicians have since seen the folly in their logic?"_

"_Yeah…it didn't take that long. The law didn't eliminate corruption or destroy the alcohol industry, it just pushed everything underground, and the criminal network that created is still being dealt with. Liquor bootleggers became mobsters, and their mobs became even more corrupt and dangerous than any backroom handshake had ever been, They paid off city officials, cops…anyone they needed to. And they killed anyone they couldn't buy. The FBI pretty much owes its existence to the need for an uncorrupted force of federal investigators during that period. But even though the laws were repealed in the early '30s, there are rumors of mob corruption going as high as the presidency decades later."_

_Myka noticed that Helena had stopped checking things off her list and was simply staring at the metal shelf in front of her. "I'm sorry," she said, "I don't mean to go into such boring detail."_

"_Nonsense, your detail is quite informative. Tell me, did this ridiculous movement ever spread?"_

"_A few nations adopted it, or some version of it, for a time. You'll be proud to know that England was never under the delusion that taking away the people's alcohol was a good idea."_

_"We're rather more like Rome in that respect. Give the mob its entertainment or face a public execution. Would that France had learned from our mistakes sooner, perhaps they may never have had need of a Napoleon. And, I suppose, that if the Hanoverians had taken the lesson to heart, America might still be sovereign British soil." She made a few notes on her clipboard. "And what finally brought this wayward colony back to its senses?"_

_Myka shook her head. "We were in the middle of a massive financial depression. Maybe they just figured everyone could use a drink."_

_Helena turned her head towards the iPod dock behind them, on the shelf, which had concluded its first foray into brass bands and returned to its ragtime run._

"_Or," she said with narrowed eyes and a sly smirk, "three decades of recombinant piano music simply drove them all to drink."_

* * *

><p>"Myka?"<p>

She was slow to come back to her senses, slow to come out of her dream. She had no idea how long she'd been asleep – in fact, she didn't remember falling asleep. As the memory faded, the one before it slowly returned – she remembered getting hit by a wave of bottomless sorrow, then being swept out into its sea.

The conversation that led her there was vague, but as it came back, guilt began to creep in where her sadness still lived.

"Leena."

The innkeeper said nothing – she rarely needed to. Instead, she sat a cup of coffee on the hardwood floor by Myka's hand and gently placed her own over it.

It was meant to be a comforting gesture, of course. Leena was perhaps the warmest and most understanding human being Myka had ever crossed paths with, and it was such kindness that she most treasured about her friend. But there were occasions – rare occasions – when she didn't want to be understood so easily.

There was only one thing she could say for sure about her feelings for H.G. Wells: they were complicated. How deeply had Helena cared for her? What was it that she felt in return? Could she ever classify it? Was she completely comfortable with that classification? Each question was a battle in the war for her sanity, her heart…maybe even her very soul. And as in any war of attrition, it was tough to tell which side was winning and which side was right – physically, mentally, and emotionally, she was a smoldering, cratered battlefield.

But it was _her_ battle – hers to fight, hers to finish. That Leena could see those answers Myka worked so hard to find without any trouble or emotional turmoil was infuriatingly unfair.

To the other woman's credit, though, she knew when to keep those answers to herself.

"Thank you," Myka said, genuinely grateful for her thoughtfulness. Leena smiled, then left her to collect herself.

The locket was the key – she understood that. She also couldn't help but think it was some kind of karmic or cosmic joke that the only chance they had of changing anything hinged upon relinquishing it. But, she resolved, she could do that. For a chance to save everyone and everything, for a shot at making the most miserable day of all their lives disappear forever, she could give up that last physical tie to her happiest place.

The coffee mug beside her fingertips was comfortingly warm, and its aroma woke her as effectively as its taste always did. She took one deep gulp of it before standing on shaky legs.

Artie stood with Jane in the foyer, his back to the sitting room and her back to the study, their faces set in serious conversation. Her boss glanced at her as she rose, then held his hand gently at the Regent. Their conversation halted, and he came to stand in front of Myka, just to the side of the leather chair that had been his agent's refuge.

"I'm sorry, Artie," she started, but the old man held his hand up to still her words, just as he had with Jane.

"Myka…" Artie's bushy eyebrows knitted together, and an altogether foreign expression crossed his face. "I know you cared for her. I do. I've known that for a long time…and I probably should have been a little more sensitive to that."

She didn't say anything. He had never been much for talking in general, but this wasn't a discussion she really wanted to have with him right now She just needed to make things right, as soon as possible.

Her hand went to her neck, to remove the chain, but stilled when he pulled the watch from his pocket.

"The way I see it, that locket recognizes you somehow...and let's face it, I don't think the watch cares much for me. Or anyone. So…you have the best shot at making something of this situation."

He reached for her free hand – she'd curled it into a fist and hadn't quite gotten around to unclenching it yet. The watch dropped from his palm to dangle by its short chain, only to be lowered carefully into hers.

"Go save her. And, you know, everything else."

"Artie…" his name caught on the way through her throat, weighed down by stowaway emotions. Gratitude, relief, hope – she felt them all form a tight grip around her chest and squeeze.

But her next word found its way out easily, as curiosity was a cunning thing.

"Why?"

He stared at her in silence for a few moments, a few moments during which Myka realized how useless and callous the question was. He may have hated Helena, but it wasn't just about saving one life. It was about saving _all_ their lives.

She expected his answer to be something to that effect. What she got instead made her feel even more guilty for wasting time to ask it.

"She saved my life too, Myka…more than once, if I keep a fair count. That does actually mean something to me."

Twin tears slipped down her face in response; she no longer trusted herself to speak. The watch was warm in her hand, and its burnished gold case reminded her of something else she already held.

He took a step back. "Good hunting, yea?"

With one last glance back to Artie, and once last look around the room, she nodded. Then, mirroring an action she'd watched him perform too many times to count in the last day, she twisted the dial at the top of the watch.


	5. Chapter 4

A/N: Buckle Up.

* * *

><p><strong>We All Have Our Time Machines<strong>

_**Part One: Those That Take Us Back**_

_**Chapter 4**_

* * *

><p><em>She found Helena in the study, curled into the slightly overstuffed dark leather chair that had become her favorite refuge, sipping a fresh cup of tea. In the two months since the Warehouse 12 agent had been reinstated, on the rare, quiet days when Myka wanted nothing more than to read, she would find the author in that very spot. Typically, the secret service agent enjoyed the solitude of her windowsill upstairs, but there was something warm and companionable about claiming the spot on the far right of the sofa; the one closest to Helena's chair. She had never known anyone with an appetite for literature like her own - except, perhaps, her father, and there was really nothing companionable about his company. Reading was a common interest, and like any other hobby, it was a welcome change to be able to enjoy it with a friend.<em>

_The other woman's dark eyes were closed as she approached the couch. Dark hair fell softly around a face that was tilted ever so slightly upward. As it dawned on Myka that her friend wore an expression of complete content, she also realized that there were earbuds in her ears, and that her iPod was in her hand._

_It made her happy to know Helena had found something in the music library that she could enjoy so much._

_"Oh! Myka!" The expression of happiness didn't dissipate after the inventor realized she was no longer alone. Instead, her grin grew wider as she pulled the headphones out of the jack and let the music flow through the tiny speakers and into the room. "This...iContraption introduced me to the most amazing singer!"_

_Myka recognized the song instantly as one of her own personal favorites and smiled. "Billie Holliday? You like Billie Holliday?"_

_A dark eyebrow raised. "You recognize this song?"_

"_Well...it's hard not to recognize her voice, but yeah. This is one of the songs that we found in my library."_

_And it was a guilty addition. She didn't really like including covers in her music library, and that song had been reproduced by so many artists, but there was something absolutely magical about the way Ms. Holliday's voice wrapped around Ray Noble's lyrics and made them something completely different. _The Very Thought Of You_ wafted through and around the pair, and within moments Helena was face to face with Myka, one hand taking a partner while the other settled on a hip._

"_Dance with me."_

_For a moment, Myka wasn't sure how to respond. The sensation of the other woman's hands, the warmth they brought with them, and her very proximity was causing her traditionally orderly brain to lose focus. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was completely unexpected._

_"This...this is hardly a song with a great dance rhythm. You really just sway to it."_

_Helena shrugged. "Then sway we shall."_

_The older woman led, but very carefully, as if she were testing new legs, and Myka followed like a child dancing for the first time, but the movement was still fluid and graceful and natural._

_"They didn't dance like this in Victorian England, did they?"_

_"No," Helena replied, swinging Myka around just a bit in a bolder yet still very conservative move. "Dancing where I came from was structured. This...swaying, as you call it...it's far less rigid."_

_They didn't say much else. They got lost in the song, in each other, and between the song and watching Helena's reaction to it, the smile Myka wore simply couldn't be removed. The other woman was adrift in the song and the sway, wearing the same peaceful expression she had been discovered with._

_Maybe it should have been awkward to dance with another woman like that, but the taller agent was a little shocked to discover just how much she enjoyed the dance. Helena's presence was comforting, not so unlike a good book, or and old friend. In some ways, Myka mused, the woman in her arms was both._

_And yet, something else, as well. That something intrigued her perhaps more than the books she wrote ever had._

_Soon enough, The song was at an end. Helena slowly opened her eyes and backed up, but the smile was still there. Her dancing partner's heart swelled a little at the thought that she had helped place it there, this serenity she hadn't ever seen Helena wear._

_"Thank you, Myka."_

_"You're welcome," she whispered back._

_And then they were standing there, eyes locked, for a lot longer than they should have._

_"Myka!"_

_Myka jumped a little at Pete's voice and took an involuntary step backward to regain balance. She turned toward the interloper wearing a blush she could feel burning from her cheeks to her kneecaps. It was a strange reaction, but one to be filed away for later._

_"Yeah, Pete?"_

_She turned away for an instant, but when her attention returned to Helena's face, it showed only its usual mask of indifference - the serenity was gone. Inwardly, she cursed Pete for scaring it away._

_"Uh...sorry…we have to go. We got a ping." He took a quick look at the pair, at their proximity to one another, and frowned. "Did I interrupt something?"_

_H.G. glanced back at her dance partner before turning to the table to reclaim her iPod._

_"No. Nothing at all," she replied._

* * *

><p>"Come on, Myka, wake up!"<p>

She gasped as she sat up, as the Bed and Breakfast faded into a thick forest, as Helena's ever-present smirk morphed into a concerned and slightly panicked Peteface.

"What…"

Words were a bad idea. _Light_ was a bad idea. Her head was a bass drum of torture focused around a sharp gash on the side of her head. When her hand went to the source, it probed gingerly and came away with a smear of blood.

"I'm so sorry, Myks. But we have to go find Claudia. Steve shot her. He shot her!"

She frowned for a moment. This all seemed familiar somehow, but her thoughts were muddy and her head hurt too much. It took several long seconds for it all to come back to her.

_The watch._

Whatever she did must have actually worked, and it had put her back into the sequence of the events right after Steve and Marcus left with the coin.

But...how? Was the watch like H.G.'s time machine? Had it placed her back in her own body? Wouldn't she have blacked out if that were the case?

She closed her eyes as dizziness and relief washed over her. It was a narrow window of opportunity, but she could stop it. She could _stop it all._

"No…no, he didn't. But we do need to find Claudia."

She stood quickly on shaky legs, then just as quickly regretted it. A wave of nausea came up to meet her, as well, and she couldn't remember the concussion being so bad the first time.

"Myks…are you okay?"

"Yeah..." The memories were still fuzzy, but she started walking toward Claudia's hiding place anyway. "We have to hurry, Pete. We need to go after them. We need to stop them."

"Hey, they didn't go that way, though! They went - "

Her partner stopped talking when she shot him her iciest look, and she noticed that his silence did nothing to stop the concern and slight panic she'd noticed before. He was worried – _of course he's worried_, she admonished herself.

"Look, Pete…just trust me. Trust me and follow me."

The lithe secret service agent took off, dodging the soft undergrowth and the groping vines as she blazed a trail through the trees. Pete was behind her, stumbling and staggering and cursing. Their motivations were different, and despite the oddly woozy feeling in her gut and the sharp needles that ran through her head with the impact of every footfall, that made all the difference.

Pete ran to catch up to Myka, to find Claudia, to stop Marcus and Steve. He was a man hunting an animal much too fast to be caught in a race. By contrast, that animal was chasing his partner; it teased her mercilessly as it nipped at her heels, a constant reminder of the price of slowing down. It drove her further, faster, harder as she streaked through the forest.

Finally, she found a streak of red amidst the dead leaves and bare bark and homed in.

"Claudia!" Pete yelled from the bare ridge as Myka caught up to the younger Warehouse agent, grabbed her arm, and started back in the direction they'd come from.

"Wait! Are they gone? Steve said to wait until they're gone."

Pete started to protest, probably to say something about speaking to Steve at all, to ask how she didn't look all shot up and holey, but Myka cut him off.

"Yes, they're gone, but we have to go. Now. We have to catch them and stop them."

"Whoa, Myka, I know they've got the coin and all, but Steve isn't a bad guy. He told me everything!"

Myka whirled, frantic, and faced her two partners. "Look, I get it, okay? I know. You can tell us all about it…._in the car._"

Pete took a step forward as Claudia's eyes darkened.

"What do you mean, you know? You knew he was a double agent this whole time and didn't tell me?"

"Myks, you're beginning to give me a really bad vibe. Did I hit you on the head that hard?"

"ENOUGH!"

The shock that passed over both their faces shoved a long spike of guilt into Myka's gut, but she bore it and pushed through it, because they were out of time.

"Look…I'll explain everything, okay? Everything. In the car. We don't have time to explain things or argue or talk it out right now, but we have a long drive ahead of us, and there will be time then, but we need to _leave. Now._"

The pair stood, mouths agape, eyes wide, for too long. Myka turned around and ran.

Trees blurred as they passed, the sound of wind obscured all other sound as she sprinted at her best speed towards the road, towards her car. Her vision was dimmer than it should be, blurry in all the bad spots, and the sharp pain in her head came now in time with every rapid beat of her pounding heart. She _really_ didn't remember the headache being so bad the first time around.

At last, she arrived at the truck, and she was relieved to find that Pete and Claudia had mostly kept up. They were just coming to a stop as, with shaking hands, Myka opened the driver side door.

She had every intention of driving, but her body picked that moment to declare it'd had enough for now, and decided to go ahead and unlock her knees so she could slide to the dirt just as Pete reached her.

"Whoa! Okay, Myka, you're going to a hospital."

She shook her head—another bad idea. "No!"

Pete ignored her protest as he collected her from the forest floor. "I'm sorry. This is all my fault. But there's something wrong, and I'm going to make it better, and – "

"They're gonna kill Steve if we don't get to them first!"

Color drained out of Claudia's face immediately, and Pete nearly dropped her in shock.

"Just help me to the passenger seat, Pete. We need to call Artie, and I need to tell you all what I know."

Her hands were still shaking a few minutes later when, on the main road and connected to the Warehouse via Farnsworth, she had mostly filled everyone in. In the interest of time – of which they all had precious little of – she was as brief as possible.

She covered the obvious questions first, like how did she get there and how does she know that Steve isn't just playing everyone and how did she know about the Regents' super secret plan for Agent Jinks, but there are plenty of other questions to be asked.

"The watch doesn't behave that way." Artie would naturally be skeptical of an artifact-induced time shift. "Something significant had to happen to turn an item with a very basic purpose into what amounts to a time machine."

"Doctor Calder suggested that it developed PTSD after the destruction of the Warehouse." Myka didn't miss the winces and flinches during her explanations. To them, the future was still just a frightening possibility. To her, it was an unbearable reality she would do anything to avoid going back to.

"So you would have needed another artifact to balance that out," Jane responded. Her fingers stroked her chin as she considered all the options. "Something else would have had to survive that explosion."

"It was..." her voice trailed off awkwardly as Helena's name caught on her tongue and held fast. "It was H.G.'s locket. I found it – before – on the floor of the entrance to the Regent Sanctum. She dropped it to give us a clue, and I had it in my pocket when…"

Artie nodded. "I'm still not sure why it brought you back in time, but Myka…you could cause a paradox here. This could make things worse."

"It might also make things better, Artie. Life after the Warehouse is…well, it's bad enough that _you gave me the watch."_

Pete's voice was low, cautions. "But Myks…H.G. always said that the past can't be changed."

"I have to hope she's wrong, Pete. I can't let this happen again. I won't. I'll take my bullet before I let that happen."

She knew there had to be a fierce look on her face, but when Pete leaned back, his eyebrows twisted in concern, she knew she'd finally found the words that made him understand just how bad it was on the other side of the next twenty-four hours.

As secret service agents, they lived their every moment in the crosshairs of fate. Federal agents were always at risk, always shot at, but every other agent at every other agency was trained to _avoid_ the crosshairs, to _dodge_ gunfire, to shelter in place behind some structure and fire back. Only the secret service agent was trained to walk in front of that bullet, to become that structure that others would shelter in place behind.

Rebecca St. Clair, a trained secret service agent herself, had once referenced dying for the warehouse the same way. In their line of work, the bullet was no longer strictly literal, but the end result would be the same.

"So…what now? How do we fix this?"

Myka watched the small screen as Artie scratched his head. "I have to consult with Mrs. Frederic on some backup plans, but the important thing here is to keep Sykes out of the Warehouse. Get to that hangar, save Steve, apprehend Walter Sykes. If that doesn't work out…"

"It has to work, Artie," Claudia chimed. "Steve's life depends on it."

The old man grunted a vague agreement, but Myka knew he had his own doubs about meedling with time.

"Just get there. And be careful. We'll talk soon." With characteristic brevity, the transmission ended.

Getting there was the easy part. They planned their attack along the way, aided by Myka's mental map of the hangar. They entered through a rear door to avoid Tyler, should he be in his glass-enclosed office, and to be out of the line of sight of the windows upstairs. Initially, there had been some concerns about the noise they would make prying that door open, but a nearby turboprop was loud enough to mask everything shy of a gunshot, and as the door screeched its angry protest along the cement floor, Myka found herself immensely grateful for their good fortune.

The plan was to tesla Tyler on the lower floor, since Claudia was fairly sure the young geek wouldn't be terribly far from his gear for extended periods of time. The second concern was Marcus Diamond. Steve had mentioned in his final video report that Sykes pulled it out fairly frequently, and combined with what they knew about the man it was a safe bet that the mad millionaire kept the box nearby at all times as a form of insurance. They would need to find that box quickly and stop Maelzel's Metronome.

That would leave Sykes and his riding crop. Pete had suggested just shooting him, something Myka was sorely tempted to follow through with.

The plan hit its first hitch when they found Tyler's fishbowl empty, but heard voices up the stairs. Myka flinched when she heard Tyler speak – having all their targets in one room made things messy, especially when Steve and Helena could both potentially get caught in the crossfire.

They moved slowly toward the stairs, ears lifted slightly to listen for movement and conversation, but the very same engine noise that had concealed their entry also concealed Tyler's footsteps as he crossed the landing toward the stairs.

He spotted them, having just reached the bottom, immediately. They had no choice.

Pete and Myka both fired with their tesla rifles, setting the boy immediately unconscious and off-balance. He teetered over to the right, flipped over the railing, and fell to the hard concrete floor below.

The sound of the impact left little doubt about young Tyler's fate.

Unbidden, the gruesome memory of his other untimely demise came to Myka's mind, and with it came a cold, tight lump in her gut. He was, in fact, one of Walter's victims in the previous timeline. One of the people she may have been able to save was already dead.

She charged up the stairs, determined to let Tyler be the last.

Steve was prone on the carpet in the doorway, grappling with the taller and stronger Marcus as the man held a hand over his throat and another just above it, a syringe gleaming dangerously as it descended toward Jinks' neck. She let Pete and Claudia move forward – their action plan had Myka coming around the platform toward the other door. She crouched low and moved below the level of the windows, focusing on her goal rather than the sounds of the brutal struggle behind her. Her heart was racing by the time she reached her destination, stood to her full height, and opened the door.

Walter Sykes met her there, riding crop in hand.

Years of training and lightning-fast reflexes kicked in fast enough for her to pull the trigger of the tesla rifle until she couldn't pull back anymore.

Unfortunately, it wasn't far enough.

Malevolent red sparks engulfed her entire body, clashed with the electrical impulses between her brain and her muscles, interjected their own signals and sent feedback back to the brain that manifested in pain wherever she tried to move her limbs. The simple act of trying to finish pulling the trigger back brought with it enough agony to send her to her knees, were she in control of her legs.

Before, she'd watched Pete struggle against the effects of the crop. His actions under its influence had been slow and hesitant, and each act of defiance had ripped a pain-laden grunt from her partner's lips. She'd witnessed the terror in Helena's face as, captured by the artifact, she had been forced to hold Myka at gunpoint in the chess lock.

The incident had resurrected the vicious memory of a similar scene, one constructed of different circumstances but similar emotions. She had assumed Helena's panic-stricken face reflected a bit of that same memory. Now that she was on the receiving end of Cecil B. DeMille's particularly cruel form of absolute control, Myka could imagine that the tears in Helena's eyes had been from the pain of resisting her puppetmaster's will so fiercely her hands had actually trembled.

The pain only worsened as the tesla rifle dropped to the floor, her right hand came up from her waist with her sidearm, and the weapon was jammed into the underside of her jaw.

"The rest of you should drop your guns before I direct Agent Bering to blow her own head off."

The sound of metal hitting the carpet drew her gaze upward, and she saw for the first time the result of Pete and Claudia's assault. A frazzled-looking Steve was sitting upright on the floor, his hand rubbing the angry red welts on his throat gingerly. Pete and Claudia looked more or less like they might have been in position to take a shot at Sykes, had she not been caught. Marcus Diamond was dead – the now-silent metronome was in Helena's graceful hands.

_Helena._

She sought and found the other woman's deep brown eyes, registered that they were open and alive and looking back in her direction. She could remember the last time her eyes were so dark, recalled exactly the last time she'd seen the other woman's beautiful face twisted with such fury.

Different circumstances, similar emotions. Except this time, her rage was protective rather than destructive.

"What do you plan to do now?" Pete asked.

"Me?" The chair-bound millionaire shrugged. "I intend to take a little plane ride. Agent Bering here will be accompanying me, along with Miss Wells."

"I'll do no such thing."

His eyes darted to the former Emily Lake and narrowed just before his grip visibly tightened on the crop. Myka's hand shoved itself further up, grinding the barrel of her gun further into her jaw, and she couldn't stifle the gasp that escaped her lips.

The sound of pain from Myka made Helena take a step toward her, and the terror written on her face was identical to what Myka had seen in the Regent Sanctum.

"Cooperate or she dies, Miss Wells, and I'm fairly certain that is the last thing you'd like to see happen."

Fear turned back to fury, and through the darkest of glares she spat back her assent.

Myka felt her feet start to step back out the office door, presumably toward the open lift installed at the far end of the platform. Hesitantly, Helena followed them.

"It'll be all right," she told her team. The warring emotions written on all their faces hurt her heart, but she took no small amount of solace in the fact that she'd told them all about the future, and all about the steps they would take to arrive at the endgame. With Diamond dead, Sykes would have to improvise, but what he didn't know was that they already knew exactly where he was going, and there were good odds that Pete and Steve would be right on their heels.

When her hand whipped away from her own throat, she screamed.

"No!"

The gunshot rang out, and she prayed that someone else had fired first and hit their mark. Instead, she watched in horror as Steve grasped at his chest and fell back to the floor.

"You bastard!" she cried out. Tears welled in her eyes, sorrow welled in her heart, and fury found purchase in every nerve ending in her body. Despite the pain it brought with it, she tried desperately to bring the gun level with the man's head, but all the effort brought was a mild shaking of her hand.

"I'll kill you! I swear to God I'll find a way to end your life!"

The gun returned to her own throat and pressed hard, the barrel still hot from the last discharge. She gasped as it seared the flesh it touched, but when the tears finally fell, it wasn't over her own pain.

"One more word and this trip ends for you. You may be the _best_ incentive, but you're hardly the only option here. I could use young Claudia, instead."

Myka clenched her jaw in anger, but bit off everything else she had to say. There was no guarantee Helena would figure out the chess lock in time to save Claudia, and Myka at least knew how to beat it, if it came down to that. But she wouldn't, _couldn't_, stop the tears from falling, nor would she let him control her easily. Her entire body began to shake, and even though it still responded to the crop's every whim, she could swear there was a faint sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

She couldn't save Tyler, and she hadn't saved Steve. She glanced over to Helena as they made their way to the hangar door, recalling words she was rapidly beginning to fear were true.

"_The ink in which our lives are inscribed is indelible."_

Claudia's wail of sorrow caught them as they passed back into the sunlight. Myka didn't miss the familiar hopeless heartbreak as it passed over Helena's face.

She had started this journey for many reasons. One of them had been to ensure that sound became just another part of her nightmares rather than a shared memory. Myka had already failed in that task, like she had failed at so many other things when it counted. This time, however, was different.

This time, _she had caused it._


	6. Chapter 5

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

_**Part One: Those That Take Us Back**_

_**Chapter 5**_

* * *

><p>In the hour it took for Sykes to wrangle them aboard a private G4 and force them airborne, Myka hadn't said a word.<p>

She'd started this trek through time with the best intentions, and she'd already failed to protect Steve. More than that, it had been her own gun, by her own hand, that had taken her friend's life. Myka wanted to believe the events were random, that Steve's death was an accident rather than preordained, but doubt clouded her thoughts, as it was beginning to cloud her mission.

Steve should have just stayed still as Sykes made his exit, even if he had her captive. but he stood up suddenly, and drew attention to himself. What had possessed him to do that?

Possessed. Was that the right word? Had he been driven by fate to put himself in the crosshairs because they had spared him at the last moment from the needle that should have killed him?

Should such a short fall have really killed Tyler?

Was time truly immutable?

"You're not very talkative, Helena. May I call you Helena?"

Walter Sykes sat at the front of the small private cabin, reigning over his private plane from his plastic, mobile throne. His words – the first in a long while – drew Myka's attention to him. He still clutched the riding crop as if it was the most precious thing in the world to him. And perhaps it was – right now, it was the only thing that prevented either of his captives from killing him with their bare hands.

The subject of his question sneered. "No," she replied.

"Well…say what you have to say, at least. It'll be a long flight."

Helena took a breath and reared back a bit before giving him the piece of her mind he'd requested.

"You didn't have to kill Mr. Jinks. You could have done any number of things to him, in fact you _tried _other means. He posed no danger to you at all, yet you shot him. What you did was cold-blooded."

"Really? What temperature was your blood when you killed? Besides, you have a bigger body count than I do."

Something that resembled remorse flickered over Helena's face for just a moment. When she recovered, however, all that could be seen in her narrowed eyes was contempt.

"And I am seriously considering adding one more to that list."

The man waved the riding crop. "Go ahead," he taunted. "But I warn you that the body you add to that count may not be the one you intend."

A shiver of dread passed through Myka as his meaning sank in. She knew one thing about H.G. Wells: the woman did, in fact, carry with her the guilt of the deaths suffered by accident in her pursuits. The deaths of the three college students that she'd hired to unearth Warehouse 2 had been unintentional; Myka had witnessed firsthand the way it had affected the other woman.

Before, she might have written it off to another marvelous acting job, but she had learned at long last how to find the truth in every moment she'd ever shared with Helena.

What might have happened if they hadn't tried to open the Warehouse, if they hadn't tripped a ping on Artie's radar? Were Helena's plans for a new ice age advanced by the fatal ambition of those three young men? Were the clues she'd left in the Warehouse system a result of being forced into action earlier than anticipated? Was H.G. thrust into the world too unprepared, and could they have successfully acclimated her before she was ready to execute her plans?

Could _she_ have mustered up the courage to give Helena a reason to abandon her plans altogether with just a little more time?

What she'd shared with the other woman was emotional, but it had never been physical. It was something awkwardly stuffed between friend and lover, something even literature had trouble defining, perhaps because that kind of devotion was so terribly rare.

Myka knew now that she would only be lying to herself if she ever said she hadn't considered crossing the line, giving a better definition to whatever they were. Women had never been a personal preference, but H.G. Wells had always been an exception to so many of her rigid rules. In the depths of the night, alone with only her thoughts, she had been forced on more than one occasion to wonder if Helena was also an exception to her typical predilections.

Her companion's eyes closed, and the secret service agent wondered what her limitless imagination had conjured for her mind's eye that made her look so sad.

"I've read every file the Regents kept on you, Miss Wells. Let's remember that I have your greatest weakness within easy striking distance as we continue, shall we?"

His words struck Myka as odd. Helena's greatest vulnerability had been her daughter, and there was really no way to exploit a vulnerability that had been dead for a century. Her confusion must have caught Sykes's attention, and as he turned to her, a sardonic grin crept across the man's face. She gasped as her mental error reflected back in his cruel eyes.

"Don't tell me you didn't know, Agent Bering. Surely you realize that having you here as a performance incentive is far better than my original plan of using young Tyler. Of course, that means the pressure is on."

He turned to face his second captive once more. "It means you only get one shot, Miss Wells."

Myka looked to Helena, whose dark eyes sought out and fixed on her own. In them, she saw something utterly indescribable: terror, pain, and some deep emotion she didn't dare name all at once. Awed by its power and horrified by its meaning, she couldn't turn away as the electric moment passed between them; her heart strained against the confines of her ribcage and her entire body felt flush and warm.

Too soon, Helena's head turned and bowed. Myka felt her soul cool a little as the deep, warm gaze was ripped away.

"What do you want from me?" she asked.

Sykes tilted his head. "Some advice."

"I strongly recommend a good psychologist."

His laugh was a cold, hollow sound. As it echoed through the small airplane cabin, he reached into a nearby bag to retrieve an aged paperbound book, then tossed it at Helena.

"I need you to help me open a certain lock. You're mentioned fairly prominent in Mr. Chaturanga's journals…you were his favorite, do you know that? I thought I'd reached a dead end in my search when I found them…but then, in the same archive, I found your file, found out you were still alive somewhere, and sent young Tyler after your location."

"Well, you found me, but I'd rather die than help you."

"Oh, you'll help me."

Without warning, Myka felt hands close over her neck and squeeze. Out of instinct, she brought her own hands up to claw through the grip choking off her air supply. Helena's panicked shouts filled her ears, her stricken face filled her field of view, and it was only after the first few frenzied moments that she realized what was happening.

"No! Leave her alone! Let her go!"

"I must insist you promise to help me first."

Helena's eyes were filled with tears as she spoke, but her gaze never left Myka's. She tried to tell her not to help him, that what he had planned was worth her sacrifice. She could feel her lips moving, but had no air left in her lungs to shape a sound.

Tears streaked down her friend's face. In pain and desperate, her eyes closed.

"Yes!" she hissed through clenched teeth. "Just let her go! Please!"

A moment later, Helena's hands were removed from Myka's neck, and she was allowed to breathe again.

It took a few moments to regain complete focus, but she was aware of the woman beside her, saw the way she hid her eyes behind her right hand, made note of the tears still falling from her eyes.

Myka's heart hurt enough at the thought that her hand, her gun, had killed Steve. There was no shortage of guilt, even if it came with an understanding that there was absolutely nothing she could have done to stop it. But she would be inconsolable had it been Helena, just as it was different when it was Sam. She reached down and carefully took Helena's hand before turning her rage on Sykes.

"You're a monster," she spat. They were the first words she'd dared utter since the hangar, her caution and his threats forcing her into silence, and she wanted to say so much more.

The empty, dead look in Sykes's eyes as he faced her euthanized every other word on her tongue. He was beyond the reach of compassion and logic, and all too willing to turn deadly in an instant.

"Says the beauty that let the beast back into the Warehouse," he replied.

She wanted to tell him - no, to _scream_ at him how wrong he was. She wanted the difference between him - a man that had willingly killed innocent people on his mindless quest for that stupid bracelet - and Helena – whose darkest deeds had only been intentionally inflicted upon arguably evil people - to be made so sharp that he'd cut himself to shreds on the truth. But the words wouldn't be for him; he was too far gone.

So she turned that thread of thought another color, and said what _Helena_ should hear.

"I believed in her and I was right. She's not the bad guy here: that title belongs exclusively to you."

"You have no idea what the Regents have done, Miss Bering. You don't know what they're capable of."

Her eyes narrowed, and she could feel her face scrunch in disgust.

"You'd be surprised."

Though his eyes narrowed a bit, there was no more discussion after that. It left Myka to her thoughts, and to Helena. She knew there was no chance of filling her in on their plan, and no more was she willing to just talk to her friend, to say things she hadn't gotten the chance to say before, with the madman watching over them. There wasn't, she supposed, much he could glean from them that he wasn't presently exploiting, but she simply wasn't willing to risk it.

Helena needed to know how much she cared, but Walter Sykes didn't need another weapon.

The hum of the jet engines was familiar, even if, in the smaller plane, it was a slightly different pitch. It had only been a handful of times that she and Helena had traveled on a plane together, and it was an experience she was surprised a displaced Victorian handled so easily.

Their last plane trip had been to Egypt, just before everything had changed. Then, as now, Myka had seated herself in the aisle, where Helena had taken the inside seat and lost herself in the wonders of her iPod.

_"I've found," she remarked at length, "that my favorite part of twentieth century music, has been the songwriting. If the lyrics aren't completely overpowered by the instrumentation, some of these songs are actually marvelous poems."_

_Myka smiled. She felt the same way about lyrics in general, but she was all too willing to lose herself in the melody before she ever really paid attention to the words. "What are you listening to?"_

_The dark-haired woman smirked and held up the device. "Well, at the moment, I'm listening to songs by...the Beatles. Their lyrics are simplistic, and some of their instrumentation is, as well…but I find myself enjoying their music, anyway. It's…happy."_

_Myka laughed lightly at her companion's wide grin. "I'm not sure you can find anyone alive that doesn't like at least one of their songs. That's actually a great band to really pay attention to. They hit it big in the U.S. right before JFK's assassination, and stayed popular during the massive culture shift that followed. They really pushed the musical envelope, too; they were one of the first bands to experiment with cutting-edge remixing and synthesized sound technology." Myka smiled again. "I think you'll really enjoy listening to that evolution."_

"_JFK? Assassination?"_

_Myka saw Helena's eyes darken a little. Apparently, she hadn't gotten that far in world history yet._

"_Uh…yeah. John F. Kennedy was the U.S. president in 1963. He was killed during a trip to Texas. There was a lot of shifting politics and changing ideals around that time, but a lot of historians point to JFK's death as the moment America lost its innocence. The rest of the decade was…tumultuous."_

"_And the Beatles continued writing songs during this period?"_

"_Yeah. They were sort of the soundtrack to the 1960s."_

_Helena pressed the sleep button on her iPod. "They must have put together quite the portfolio."_

"_Yeah, they did a lot in a relatively short amount of time. They released about an album a year before they broke up and John Lennon went solo."_

_"Ah...pity. Creative differences?"_

"_Somewhat." Myka leaned in conspiratorially. " Over a woman."_

"_Oh, my! Intrigue! Please, do go on."_

_Myka laughed. "John Lennon married Yoko Ono, and apparently Yoko didn't get along with anyone else in the band. John chose his wife over the band, effectively. He ended up releasing a few solo albums – they're in the '70s playlist."_

"_He stopped writing songs? Why?"_

_Something in Myka's brain didn't want to broach the real reasons. "He claimed that he wanted to spend more time with his son."_

"_But children grow, my dear. Did he withdraw from music completely? What is he doing now? That boy should be well into adulthood."_

_She swallowed. "Um…he died. In 1980."_

"_Died? He would have been rather young, wouldn't he? What happened?"_

_Myka thought back to the time she'd asked the same question of her father. She had thought, at age 8, that he had answered indelicately, but she knew now there was nothing delicate about death._

_"He…was murdered."_

_Helena went silent and still, and Myka felt the need to continue speaking._

"_They actually use him as a case study in training. His death and the attempt on President Reagan's life happened within months of one another, so the Secret Service revised its security procedures shortly after."_

_The expression on her friend's face was unreadable in an entirely unsettling way._

_"Helena?"_

_"Why would someone shoot a musician? Presidents – leaders – have always been targets, but a musician? What possible motivation would someone have for killing an artist?"_

_Myka sighed. The reasons weren't important to the training, but the eight year old bookworm had long since found that very answer._

_"Celebrity cultivates obsession, and he was – and still is – one of the most famous figures of modern history. Fame in the modern era is a beast. The press follows famous people around as a full-time job. More so now, but even back then, privacy would have been very, very difficult for someone that well-known. The man that shot John Lennon had obsessed over him for years. He was...is...very, very sick."_

_"He is still alive? Why on earth would you allow a man like that to live?"_

_Myka winced. Why hadn't she heeded the warning bells in her head? She should have known better than to walk down this line of conversation with Helena._

_"I...if it had happened in another state, I'm not sure he would be alive, but New York abolished the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison."_

_"And New York thinks that is enough? America thinks that is enough?"_

_"It depends on who you ask, I suppose. You're straying into some pretty hotly contested politics with that question. Texas, for instance, has no problems with the death penalty, but that state is the leader of a minority of states that still put inmates to death. Internationally, it's only legal in a handful of countries."_

_Helena whirled on her, barely-restrained fury in her eyes. "Then Texas punished the man who killed the president, yes? They would have been right to do so."_

"_Helena, the details—"_

"_Are important! Are everything! The brutality of other human beings never ceases! All we are given, all that is left to matter at all are the details of how that brutality is handled and punished!" _

_The fury in the older woman's eyes scared her a little. The look on Helena's face in that moment was exceptionally familiar – it was a look she had been trained to find and neutralize in a crowd of people._

"_Does the world honestly think it was enough to lock a man into the...the vacation homes modern American prisons are in punishment for the death of another human being? Do you?"_

_Myka knew she was thinking of her daughter, about the brutal way her life had ended, and how pointless it had been. Prior to that incident, H.G. Wells would probably have supported the rehabilitation of inmates, even the criminally insane ones._

_She'd been through something like what Helena had. She knew how completely the colors of justice changed when you've lost someone you loved deeply to violence.__If she ever found the man that killed Sam, she wasn't sure she could let him live long enough to put him in cuffs and read him his rights._

_"No," she confessed. "I don't."_

_The answer softened the look in Helena's eyes, and Myka was relieved to see it go._

_"I'm sorry. I should have thought a little more about it before I ran my mouth off like that."_

_But Helena had already masked her fury with the skill of an Oscar-winning actress. Myka knew it wasn't directed at her, but she also knew that if justice were a flesh and blood person, it would want to hide in witness protection for a while._

_"You have nothing to apologize for. You were only giving me the history of a subject I'd found fascinating. I'm sorry if I...overreacted."_

_The rest of the flight passed quietly. After a time, Myka started leafing back through the book on her tray table. But cautiously - and surreptitiously - she would steal glances back to her friend._

_Her hand never moved to turn the iPod back on, and though her eyes were closed, the trained agent knew she wasn't asleep._

_It was disturbing to think that Helena had passed the remainder of the long flight in complete silence._

Cautiously, slowly, a set of slender fingers wrapped themselves around Myka's left hand, and the warmth from earlier returned quickly. She glanced down at their joined hands and sighed.

There were tells back then. As skilled as the older woman had been at concealing the truth, she hadn't always succeeded. They were subtle hints at something dark below the surface, and her training should have kicked in long before Egypt. She'd been so enthralled with her new friend…

She squeezed the hand in hers tightly. She could let the past go here, now. She hadn't been able to share a quiet moment with Helena in over a year, and despite their precarious situation, she was determined to make the most of it.

"We should rest, as much as we can," she suggested. Helena nodded in agreement.

Their rest would be fitful, but their hands remained clasped together until they landed.

* * *

><p>There was little she could change without making a mess of things.<p>

Oh, her training kicked into overdrive – she watched Sykes carefully for any chance to knock away the riding crop or accidentally bury him under a pile of rubble, but no such opportunity came. He opted, for the journey to the sanctum, to keep Helena under his control, and so Myka was coerced at gunpoint into every leg of their journey.

When they finally arrived, it took the madman a little while to examine the chess lock, to look over the chamber, to be sure there were no other traps. Satisfied, Myka was finally forced into the chair.

Though she had the solution in mind, it was difficult to squelch the feeling of panic that ravaged her when the iron collar closed around her throat. And Helena, brave Helena, was as frightened by the reality presented to her as she had been the first time.

"You don't understand," the former agent declared, "I have _never seen this lock before_."

"You wouldn't need to see it to know how it works, would you? You just need to know how this teacher of yours thought. He liked puzzles." Sykes waved the tattered journal around. "That much is obvious. And I bet he loved chess."

"It was his favorite game. We played every day for years."

"So how would you beat him when you played?" His eyebrow lifted. "You _did_ beat him, right?"

"Not once," she hissed.

During training, the Secret Service focused heavily on unusual behavior. They taught her how to spot a nervous suspect in a crowd of people, trained her to look for the odd expressions, no matter how brief they might be. In all the time she'd spent around him – before and now – Myka had never once seen Walter Sykes carry anything other than a cold confidence, but at Helena's words, his nose flared and his eyes widened.

She recognized the expression, even if he only wore it for a brief second. It was the look people wore when they were afraid.

_At last,_ she thought, _he's beginning to run out of backup plans._

"Then you'd better figure that out in a hurry," he growled, "or Agent Bering here won't be with us much longer."

The rest passed much as it did the first time: Helena's last-minute, emotional save, the rumbling of the ground beneath them, the call to some hidden apprentice – though who that would be, Myka couldn't fathom. Marcus Diamond should be dead.

There wasn't time to dwell on that detail, though. Soon enough, the portal opened and their captor guided them through.

On the other side, they found the endless, endless rows of silent artifacts that lived in the Warehouse and – to Myka's relief – not a single living soul in sight.

"Miss Bering, I believe you know where my bracelet is. If you'd be so kind as to lead?"

"What makes you say that?"

She was roughly shoved forward by Helena as Sykes responded. "I've read _your_ file as well. You have an immaculate eye for detail and a photographic memory. You know where that item is. So," he gestured with his hand, waving her forward, "three pace lead, if you don't mind. If your fellow agents figured out my plan, I'd rather not get caught in any artifact traps."

To emphasize the point, her gun was jabbed harshly between her shoulder blades. Her next step was more of a stumble, and the incendiary expletive she barely bit off before it left her lips was an accurate reflection of just how much she enjoyed being manhandled at the point of her own weapon.

She did, indeed, know where Collodi's Bracelet had been shelved. It was an inventory item she'd logged and re-logged many times over the years, in an area of the warehouse that was absolutely rife with artifacts that Artie could re-purpose for defense.

They didn't exactly have a cohesive plan in place when she'd last spoken with any of her friends, but she knew that it was a good sign that Jane and Artie didn't meet them at the portal.

They were a few aisles away from their destination when Myka saw it – Dante's Death Mask, uncovered and out of place. She remembered Claudia's story from their hunt for McPherson a little over a year ago, how he'd trapped them with chameleon mines and the mask, and how escape had come by climbing upward. Once they crossed, Sykes would be trapped.

Of course, she and Helena would be too.

She said nothing as she crossed in front of the object, stopping only once they were all on the other side.

Instantly, she was hit with the overwhelming scent of fudge.

"And why are we stopping?"

She turned around to face her captor and her friend. "You don't smell that?"

Helena's eyes widened when she caught a whiff of the warning, but Sykes seemed to be in the dark.

It was a good sign. It meant he wasn't as up to speed on the Warehouse's operations as he thought he was.

"Fudge. What of it?"

"It's a warning. It means something is wrong."

He raised his eyebrow. "Well we won't be sure unless you proceed, will we Agent Bering?"

Irritation and fear mixed in her blood and her voice. "If I keep walking, I'll be dead."

"And if you don't, you'll still be dead."

The crop bent. An arm raised.

"No! We can find another way around!" Helena's hand shook, an effort Myka knew was likely causing agony to course through her body. She was tempted, if only to end that suffering, to step backward into the trap.

But then, suddenly, Helena's hand was pulled to the left, and the gun was wrenched free.

"Bazinga!"

To the left, three aisles over, Claudia wore a wide grin. In her hands was a device that looked most like a jackhammer with a set of copper cables wrapped around it.

_Joseph Henry's Prototype Electromagnet_, she thought. _Thank God._

The identical thought seemed to cross Helena's mind, but Sykes's face showed an entirely different set of feelings.

"No!" he roared. In an instant, Helena was bowed over on the floor, a pain-laden cry slipping between her lips on the way down. Myka rushed forward, determined to stop him, determined to help her friend, but halfway there she felt the pull of the crop begin to take over her body once more.

A loud clang later, the feeling was gone.

As Myka took a stuttered step forward, Helena began to rise once again. Walter Sykes was hunched over in his chair, unconscious, and Cecil B. DeMille's riding crop slipped from his fingers to the warehouse floor.

Behind him stood Mrs. Frederic, a dangerous-looking cast iron frying pan still in hand.

"Nice shot, Mrs. F! All your sneaky skills have never been so cool to watch!"

Pete trotted down the aisle with a smile on his face and a handful of zip ties. From other hiding places, Jane and Artie also emerged to converge around the unconscious lunatic. Myka helped Helena back to her feet, mentally cataloguing her expression and her movements.

"Are you all right?"

Despite the grimace she still wore, there was a smile shining through. "I'll be all right, darling."

As Pete secured Sykes to his own wheelchair, as Helena gazed back at her alive and warm and _whole, _Myka felt like she'd won some kind of victory for the first time in days. There was hope in her, hope that she might actually succeed in at least part of her mission, hope that their futures were not written in stone.

But she squelched it, just for a moment. There was one last piece of the plan to take care of.

"What are we going to do about the bomb?"

Helena tilted her head at her – she, of course, had no idea what was going on – but Artie answered.

"We have a few theories, but none we're completely sure of. We needed more time to model them and test them – that's why we tied him to the wheelchair with – "

Artie broke off and frowned the kind of frown that Myka only got to see when someone was doing something he didn't approve of, which was truthfully fairly often. She followed his line of sight to watch Pete tie Sykes's right hand with a thin jute twine instead of the wide zip ties they pilfered from their last encounter with air marshals.

"What?" he said. "We're out of zip ties. This was the best thing I could find!"

Artie growled in response. "We have to keep him in that chair until we can find the right solution to the bomb problem, Pete."

"Well…how long do you need? Because we won't get more zip ties for another week."

"I don't know. A few hours? Maybe a day?"

"What would happen to the bomb if we put it in the Bronzer?"

The team turned slowly to face Myka wearing a variety of shocked expressions, but Artie's was the most curious. His eyebrows were knit together as he considered the idea and, just moments later, he nodded.

"Likely nothing. And for now, that's a good thing."

They rushed through the aisles in a circuitous route to avoid some of the traps that Artie and Claudia had put down. When they arrived at the bronzer, Sykes was still out cold. Quickly, they prepped the system for another addition to their evil statue garden.

Free of the riding crop's influence and, for the moment, without a purpose, Helena and Myka had drifted so close to one another that Myka could feel Helena's body heat at her arm, and then the shiver as it passed through the other woman's body. Gently, tentatively, the hands nearest to one other clasped together, one seeking comfort and the other offering the same.

"Are you all right?" The question was just above a whisper but not loud enough for the others to hear. Myka knew her friend would hate to seem vulnerable, but she was also sensitive to what they were doing, and what it meant to the oldest one of them.

In return, that person offered the hand joined with hers a reassuring squeeze. "This is the most reasonable of all present options."

"That's not what I asked."

She turned, searching for and catching Helena's dark, deep gaze. "No. To both question and statement." But the darkness abated a little as she offered a smile. "But as I said, this is a reasonable option."

Myka's attention was torn away from her companion by the low moan coming from the bronzing chamber, and took an involunatry step forward as she realized where it had come from.

Sykes was waking up.

It only took him seconds to test his bindings and, when he realized he was tied down, attempt to sway out of his chair. When he couldn't do that, he finally took in his surroundings.

"You're going to bronze me? Really?"

Artie didn't look up from the control panel, but took the time to answer anyway. "Yes."

Myka watched Walter's face carefully, and was rewarded with a full expression of the fear she'd caught him wearing back in the sanctum. It was all the affirmation she needed – this _would _work. Walter Sykes was out of moves.

He pulled at his wrist ties frantically as Artie continued setting up the bronzer.

The wrist they hadn't found a zip tie was loosening a bit.

She took a step forward.

"Uh, Artie?" Pete, somewhere over her shoulder, had apparently noticed the ominous give in their captive's right wrist. "Hurry it up a bit, man. I don't like the way he's twitching."

She looked over at Pete, saw the way his eyebrows had bowed inward and his nose had scrunched, and recognized the expression.

Pete was getting a very bad vibe.

By the time she turned back to Sykes, his hand was loose enough to move around his chair's armrest, but there was no way he'd be getting out of his chair without a knife. His hand was fumbling with the underside of that armrest, as if trying to pry something free.

He didn't have a knife. No. He couldn't.

Could he?

She started walking toward the bronzer as the chamber door began to close, drawing her sidearm as she went, and trained it on her target. He paid no heed, his fingers and attention clenched around some small, ivory-handled object still hung on the frame of his chair.

He couldn't get loose. He couldn't get out of his chair.

She wouldn't let him.

She stepped up to the platform as Pete shouted her name, recognized the item as it whipped upward and pointed toward where Helena stood behind her. Her training kicked in instantly and she threw herself in front of the door, in front of the object.

In front of the small, single-shot pistol as Sykes pulled the trigger.

The thunderous bang echoed through the chamber, echoed in her head as she fell backward. The hard metal floor below was unforgiving, and pushed the last precious air out of her lungs. She gasped for more, but her lungs refused to accept it.

From somewhere over her head came another thunder, like a herd moving toward her. There was shouting, but she couldn't quite decipher it yet through the ringing in her ears. Her field of vision was filled with endless stacks of artifacts and the warehouse roof and the very top of the now-shut bronzing chamber door.

"Myka! No!"

The voices were beginning to form words with meanings she could comprehend, but they sounded distant. Suddenly, her vision was filled not with the rusting metal roof, but with Helena's raven hair and stricken face.

Her struggling heart gave a heavy thud as she saw the tears on her beloved's face.

_Beloved?_

"You know what, it's better this way." Sykes shouted loud enough to be heard through the heavy metal door, and even Myka could hear his villainous final speech. "You'll all lose something you care about, after all. Especially you, Miss Wells. Maybe now you'll know what it's like to have a hole in _your_ soul."

Helena looked away, toward the door, just long enough to offer her own vicious parting shot.

"Go to Hell," she spat.

There was a hiss, then, just as Helena cast her gaze back downward. Myka knew Sykes was dealt with, and that the danger was over. She knew that the Warehouse, that _Helena_ was finally safe.

"Myka, it's all right. You'll be all right."

A hand went to her chest, was placed over her heart. Myka smiled; it warmed her figuratively and literally, and filled her with hope. Too soon, it was withdrawn to grab for something Pete was reaching out with.

There was blood all over Helena's hand as it crossed Myka's field of vision.

"Helena…"

Suddenly, there wasn't enough time. There wasn't enough air to carry the name past a whisper. The tears in the other woman's eyes spilled, landing warm and wet on Myka's cheek. They were comforting, in that they were as warm and tangible as the woman herself was. Though she had never wanted to see them in those glorious eyes again, they were confirmation of her success and an absolution for her failures.

Yes, they were all finally safe. She had taken her bullet to make sure of it.

The Phoenix had demanded a sacrifice, hadn't it? In order to save a life, someone else had to lose one. More pieces came together, the last missing shards of a puzzle her mind had unconsciously tried to finish for years.

The past could be changed, she realized. The future – _Helena's future _– was never written in stone. But where her brilliant friend had once assumed the fault lay in Fate, it was the laws of nature, the laws of _physics_ that were ever indelible.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Myka had saved Helena's life...and would gladly pay the price with her own.

"Don't speak, Love. Rest. Artie has gone to find something to make this better. You'll be all right."

Love, she had called her. Of course it had been love – it had always been love. Myka had lost herself in the pain and grief, was deeply wounded by it because she had let the woman get so far past her defenses. She had let her all the way in, the only person she'd ever let so close.

She was in love with Helena Wells.

She could hear the shouting in the background, hear Pete and Artie and Jane and Claudia frantically try to orchestrate something to save her, but she knew it was useless, just as she knew that she would do it all over again, knowing now what fate awaited her.

Her only regret was that she had only a handful of seconds left to say everything she had never been able to say, and no way to actually say weaker by the moment, only her lips would move at her mind's command. There was no air left in her body to carry her words out.

"Please, Myka. Please hold on."

It was difficult to lift her arm, and it cost every ounce of the strength she had left, but she brought her hand to Helena's face. The pads of her fingers rested gently against her jaw, and Myka could dimly feel the other woman's tears as they streaked past.

"Stay with me…"

She was happy Helena would survive. She was grateful she'd been given the opportunity to save that which was most important to her. It brought a smile to her face, and she could only hope it said everything she couldn't.

_I love you_, she thought.

Feeling vanished from her fingertips. Her hand dropped as strength left her. Soon, even Helena's face faded from view.

The last thing she caught was the scent of crisp, fresh apples. She didn't understand why, but it reminded her of the person she loved most.

But too soon, the scent faded away, as did everything else.

* * *

><p> end Part One


	7. Intermezzo

A/N: now...let's all breathe for a second and remember one thing: the hundred conflicting little themes I have running in this story have to come together at some point, and they yet.

Also, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Yeah.

* * *

><p><strong>We All Have Our Time Machines<strong>

**_Intermezzo_**

"_What comes next in the series isn't really fit for children."_

_Helena's head tilted to the side. "You've read these books, yet you do not count them amongst your favorites. I'm curious to know which novels you do enjoy."_

_Myka smiled. "I'll put together a list of all the good stuff you've missed out on."_

_The older woman didn't respond immediately. Instead, she closed the book without marking it, as if she were no longer interested in it at all, and placed it on the table beside her. She rose slowly, gracefully, in a series of lithe movements that only she could execute so flawlessly, and crossed to the bookshelf to select another volume. It did not escape Myka's keen notice that, in selecting the old, leatherbound book, there had been no searching, nor did she fail to note that in selecting an open page, there was hardly any flipping. It was as if Helena knew exactly what she was aiming to find. _

_Satisfied with her selection, the other woman tilted her head to the side slightly as she raised her teacup to her lips._

"_Well, then I shall not skip ahead of your suggestions, my dear," she said at last._

_The leather couch to Helena's right was vacant, and Myka decided that it simply begged to be occupied. She sat furthest to the left such that she would share the end table with the author, curled her feet below her, and settled in to read her book. It had been her intention to return to her room, to her familiar windowsill, and read in the soft lamplight, but she was overcome with this urge to be near her friend._

"_So you selected Shakespeare to tide you over," she said._

"_You must have uncanny vision if you can read the title on this book."_

_Myka laughed lightly. "No, my vision is terrible. I'm just very familiar with that particular book."_

"_Ah," Helena said, "that explains why it looks so well-read."_

_The agent smiled. "Which play are you reading?"_

"_At the moment, I'm reading Act II, Scene 1 of The Tempest."_

_Myka frowned. "And you went straight to it. Why that play? Why that scene?"_

_For a moment, Helena was quiet. She offered a small, sad smile before answering._

"_A reminder."_

_Myka was very familiar with that scene: it was a favorite of hers. It demonstrated to the audience how cunning Antonio was, how easy it is for the man to manipulate others into doing things they ought not do. It was the moment in the play where the audience begins to become truly sympathetic with Prospero._

_It's also the scene from which one of the most quotable lines in all of Shakespeare's works lay buried in the midst of Antonio's scheming._

_It served as a reminder for a great many things, but few of those things were positive._

"_Helena…"_

_Myka was pleased when her friend lifted her head, and even happier that the darkness she occasionally witnessed in the woman's eyes wasn't present in her deep gaze. Instead, there was a sadness, maybe even a longing that threatened to break Myka's heart._

"_We are all sea-swallow'd," she started, but Myka reached out and placed her hand against Helena's, stilling the words on her tongue._

"_Yes, we all have our seas, and we all flounder in them," Myka started, "but we do not always have to struggle against the tide alone."_

"_I have never known another way, Myka."_

_The younger woman sighed, but smiled hopefully._

"_What's past is prologue," Myka quoted, squeezing the hand she held in her own. "What to come in yours and my discharge."_


	8. Chapter 6

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

_**Part Two: Those That Carry Us Forward**_

_**Chapter 6**_

* * *

><p>Once upon a time, there lived a woman in love.<p>

She was unsurpassed in her brilliance, unrivaled in her bravery, unparalleled in her beauty. In her greatest love, she had found an intellect to match her own, a deeply loving heart, and a rare, captivating loveliness that permeated through to the soul. In her love's haunting green eyes, she could see nothing but trust, nothing but hope, and the promise of a future she never believed she could deserve.

But the world was unkind. Ever did it find the one thing in the woman's life that brought her happiness and wrest it from her arms.

"No…"

Ever did Fate place her in the same position, holding her loved ones as their blood slipped through her fingers, as their hearts stilled beneath her palm. Ever did she watch their eyes close for eternity, shutting away all the hopes and dreams they reflected back to her. Ever did she hear their souls depart on their final, rattling breath.

Helena felt tears slip free, over the hand she held in place on her cheek, as Myka's green eyes closed. Her other hand, still held over her friend's heart, felt the moment the precious thing stopped beating. Tears turned to sobs as, once again, the only true thing in her world faded from it.

"Stay with me…"

The clatter of footsteps behind her halted well away as her broken words carried through the chamber. They were all too late.

Ever was she robbed of her family. Ever did life exact those dearest to her as a toll for daring to love.

Ever was she made to be alone, left to bear her grief in silence.

The wail that escaped her lungs was not silent. It screamed of a lifetime of loss, of a wound only just begun to heal ripped open and exposed to the caustic air once again. It keened of the deepest sorrow of a string of sorrows from a soul that had finally reached its limit.

In time, the others managed to pull her away from Myka's body and take her to the Bed & Breakfast. They had all lost. They would all mourn.

But Helena took root at the sun room window, her back to the others, and she stared outward at the harsh, bleak plains of South Dakota, listening but never hearing the conversation behind her.

Until…

"Artie…there's gotta be something. Anything."

Claudia's frantic voice pulled at her a little. She cared for the young woman. To hear her voice so broken…

"No…not for this. Nothing for this."

"The watch, Artie!" Pete's voice was excited. Hopeful. Perhaps a bit desperate. " You can save her!"

Artie's was not. "No…that's not what the watch does. It doesn't bring the dead back."

"But it brought Myks back in time once already! Artie, maybe we can save her the same way!"

Something ground to life in the inventor's brain in that moment, as if an important part of a puzzle she hadn't realized was there had just slipped into place.

"What do you mean, that's what Myka did? Explain."

Her throat was dry, and her voice cracked. It had been hours since she'd last used it to do anything but scream. There was no immediate response from the table, so she turned to face them all, unsettled by the matching set of stunned faces.

"What did Myka do? What do you mean when you say she was 'brought back?'"

"She…uh…she came back in time, kind of like when we went to 1961, but she traveled back into herself. The watch," Pete gestured toward Artie, "did it. In her timeline, the Warehouse had been destroyed and …you…"

"Pete." Artie held his hand up. "Myka said the watch had become a bifurcated object upon the warehouse's destruction, and that it was bound to HG's locket. That happened as the Warehouse was destroyed. She saved the Warehouse, Pete. She saved…_her_. The watch does what it's always does…and it never brought anything back from the dead."

"You're telling me…." Helena hadn't missed the subtle nod of Artie's head in her own direction as he spoke of Myka's actions, and her eyes closed to steady herself against tears and grief and sheer enormity of what she was about to say. "You're telling me Myka _changed the past?_"

There was a long pause. Looks were exchanged, realizations dawned. "Yeah," Artie said finally, a slight hint of awe in his voice. "Yeah…she did."

At once, a million thoughts flooded Helena's mind. She was instantly brought back to that horrible time before the bronze where she'd lost herself in the effort of trying to bring her daughter back. She remembered what it felt like to be so obsessed, so filled with fury, and she felt that same darkness creeping upon her once again. She would give anything to bring Myka back.

Myka, it appeared, had already given her all to do the same thing.

"We can save her, then. This means we can find a way!"

"No…no, Helena. Her actions here will have consequences we'll probably never see. There's always a price. The Warehouse was spared, but somewhere out there something will die in its place. And you were spared, but – " the older man sighed heavily. "You know what that cost."

"The price is a life. I pay mine gladly."

So dark was her expression that everyone assembled looked at each other nervously.

"Miss Wells…" Mrs. Frederic, silent and standing in the corner during the entire exchange, spoke up, but Helena wished to hear none of it.

"No, you don't understand. Myka was never meant to pay this terrible price. It should have been me. I will stop at nothing to make this right."

"You've been down that path before, Miss Wells. It didn't end well…for either of you."

She could feel the anger mix with building tears, and turned away from the table to preserve whatever dignity she had left. She would find her own way to save Myka.

"We need to make arrangements." Mrs. Frederic said. "For both of them."

"No."

It had been on the tip of Helena's own tongue, but had come instead from Claudia. The younger inventor wore on her face all the pain and grief the older inventor felt, but it was perhaps the absence of the young woman's typical innocence that was most disconcerting.

"Myka said Steve left us a message before. He asked me to keep the faith. He said it again just before he died. I don't know what that means, but I know it means something. We can't bury him until I figure it out."

"What if that is simply his way of saying goodbye, Miss Donovan? He had a deep faith himself."

Claudia shook her head. "No…no, it has to mean something. It has to. We work in the most magical of magical kingdoms. You can't tell me there isn't something out there that can bring both of them back."

Artie sighed sadly before answering. "Claudia...look, there's nothing more I want than to have them both back, but what do you propose we do? Who among us would you give up to bring them back?"

And that was the quandry, wasn't it?

Once upon a time, Helena had believed in fairy tales. The people around her – her father, her mother, her brother – all prepared her for the reality of adulthood in the modern era. But she never understood how a woman reigned over the most powerful empire on the planet but the rest of the women in her realm were still treated as second-class citizens. The incongruities of the relentless march of progress and the stagnant state of the Victorian female was a paradox, but one she'd committed herself to overcoming at the earliest age. Steam engines could transport people and cargo across continents in a day. Gas could be delivered to a household for convenience after dark. She could dream of and build greater marvels, and surely a girl of such ingenuity would find a means to produce her own happily ever after.

Her future had been built on those dreams and promised every wonder her agile imagination could conjure. By virtue of her brilliance, she had been afforded opportunities few women in her time could have even hoped for. Her love of science and literature converged to give an immortal life to the adventures she lived and the inventions she created.

Helena G. Wells had loved her work, but it was the promise of a _family, _of a future with children that would never have to be taught they were less worthy than anyone else that had made her happiest.

She had been so arrogant in her youth, and her fairy tale ended soon enough.

All her genius, all her inventions and experiments, all of her limitless will had not been enough to solve the puzzle of the past. Try and try as she might, nothing she ever did had any effect at all upon the outcomes of her darkest moments. In the end, she had not only lost the family she took such joy from, but joy itself.

Enter Myka Bering, unanticipated variable.

It had been a century since she'd felt close to another human being. It had been longer since she last held the ability to feel anything but rage. It had taken so long to come to terms with that darkness within her, and it had cost so much more than her freedom to be rid of it.

Perhaps it had been her grief that had placed the solution to her time travel dilemma out of her reach. It had never occurred to her that a life must be paid for a life to be spared, even though the darkest of artifacts in Warehouse 12 demanded such a price for their resurrection efforts. For her daughter, she would have paid such a toll in an instant.

For Myka, it would be an equally simple sacrifice.

"Look…we've had—" Leena stopped her statement short of giving a name to the kind of day they had. "We won't get anywhere with this conversation right now."

Claudia had no answers for Artie, or at least had none she was willing to voice to the group. Helena suspected that, much like herself, the gifted young woman would give her own future up for either of her fallen comrades. Instead, she let action make a statement as she left the room abruptly.

"Claudia!"

Helena held up her hand, stopping Artie as he stepped forward. "Allow me," she said.

He eyed her cautiously for a moment, perhaps still wary of her, but relented. No one else bothered to stop her as she followed the girl up the stairs, where she discovered her quarry exactly as she had expected: glued to her laptop in her room.

"Don't try to talk me down," she said. "I'm not in the mood."

"I wouldn't dream of it, my dear. I know exactly how you feel."

The redhead sent a sideways glance in her direction. "Yeah," she said at length, "I suppose you do."

Whatever the youngest agent had been doing to her computer stopped after the words left her lips. A frown crossed her face as she considered a thought, and soon she was turned to face Helena with a look in her eye that brokered no argument.

"This is what sent you over, isn't it? This kind of pain?"

_Yes, _her mind readily supplied, but that wasn't enough. She didn't deserve for her explanations and apologies to be accepted, but that didn't change the fact that she owed them.

"I had it in mind that there were no puzzles that my intellect could not solve. I was proven wrong so many times, and yet could never accept it. My arrogance, as much as my grief, brought about my undoing."

"Times as in multiple? How many excellent adventures through time did you take, exactly?"

"Enough, but I can see now that it wasn't only Christina's death that set me down that dark path. I set out upon that journey before she was even born."

Claudia was quiet as she sat back and scrutinized the other woman, but at last drew the correct conclusion from between the lines.

"You've never mentioned her father."

In the clarity that she had been afforded as a hologram, she had come to realize that it had been more than her daughter's murder that had brought her to madness. In her father's death, Christina had been a comfort and a joy, a piece of him to carry forward even if he would not be there to help her. Her grief had been balanced by the hopes and dreams her unborn child represented, and then by the joy of watching her happy child grow. When Christina was lost, Helena was left to mourn alone, and without the tether of hope that had been there before, she began to also mourn the loss the child had helped ease.

It was as if she had lost both of them at the same time.

"He was a doctor, recently graduated from Cambridge, and a brilliant mind in his own right. We met shortly after I gained my status as a Warehouse agent, and...well, we fell in love. Reagan always professed to loving my imagination, and perhaps I loved how he kept me suitably grounded. We were to be married."

She twisted the ruby ring on her finger, the one he had meant to give her as a promise the day they were wed, to go with the locket he had presented her with the night he had asked for her hand.

"What happened to him?"

"He died as he attempted to save another man's life, just days before our wedding."

The deep and contemplative look on Claudia's face was a stark contrast to the rage she expected after her explanation. The young woman seemed sympathetic.

"You've lost a lot of people to violence, haven't you?"

"I've lost _everything_ to violence."

"Did you ever tell Myka about Reagan?"

She'd never asked, and Helena had never thought to tell.

"No."

The pair said nothing for a while, the elder woman watching the younger carefully as the younger processed all the new information she'd been given.

"There's a way to get them back, isn't there?"

Helena nodded slowly. "Yes...but at the cost of other lives."

"You and me...we can do this, right?"

"Claudia, listen...it must only be me. Myka would never forgive me if I allowed you to give your life in such a cause, and I would venture to guess Mr. Jinks would be quite cross with me, as well."

"H.G...I can't just sit here and do nothing. And besides, Myka will be plenty pissed at you."

"Then let us come up with a plan, you and I, and reason out what must be done to execute it after we've found the means."

Claudia nodded in agreement, and Helena shut her eyes in gratitude and relief.

The day was dying. In the low light, shutting her eyelids was enough to blot out all light, and she was suddenly back in the Warehouse, trapped.

She had never expected to keep her thoughts in the bronze.

Time was meaningless after the first. In a place where there were no markers for time, it all blurred together. Her mind produced its own reality, its own images, its own way to mark time. Within the cold darkness, reality didn't matter.

She conceived of a universe where tragedy didn't exist, nurtured a story where the chief protagonist was her daughter, and her greatest fans were her doting loving parents. Theirs was a utopian world with little strife and an overabundance of joy.

The mind works quickly, however, particularly without the distractions of the real world. Like a dream, the story ended far sooner than it would have in life, and when her Christina's lifetime passed, and that of her children and her children's children and even beyond, the devastating loneliness that had driven Helena to the bronzing chamber seeped back into her mind, corrupted the beautiful world her imagination had crafted, and shattered it.

And then the rage had returned, and she began in earnest to plot a course for the world, should she ever awaken again. Her imagination had supplied her with an endless number of possibilities, a limitless amount of potential outcomes, and in the end, exactly one solution.

And then one day the cold disappeared, the darkness gave way to endless light, and for the first time in an eternity she could feel her heart beat within her own skin.

The hour of mankind's judgment was at hand.

"_Welcome back to the living, my dear."_

_His accent was familiar, even if the place was not. Without her sense of sight, she could still note the differences in her world: this place did not smell like home, or any place she had ever spent a significant amount of time. The air was cool, but dry. She could tell she was indoors, but the noise was nearly overwhelming: there was a high pitched, intermittent rumbling coming from some feet off to her left, and the unfamiliar sound of blowing air from somewhere above her. There was also the sound of the outside world, leaking through whatever walls were made out of now, and what sounded like the growl of wild animals passing by at high speeds. She assumed it was the sound of a modern engine, perhaps a combustion-based one. The air above her may account for the pleasant temperature, perhaps mankind had learned to condition the air to be more hospitable than whatever was out of doors._

_Of all these new and invasive environmental sounds, it was the one from the right that gave her greatest pause. She had heard something similar only once, in the moments before she was thrust into eternal night, from the cryonic coils on the bronzing chamber. What use had modern man found for such a severe technology?_

"_Who are you?" Her question was carried on a raspy voice, having passed through a dry throat. She felt at once the placement of something smooth and cold in her hand._

"_Perhaps I am Enki, come to liberate Inanna from the endless night of the Underworld."_

_The reply was strange, and perhaps it showed in her face. Her savior switched topics._

"_Drink. It is only water. I can only imagine you must be thirsty after your long incarceration."_

_As the liquid slid down her throat, quenching a parched and desperate thirst, the pieces fell together. The device in the corner was a commercial ice box, meant to store and preserve food and drink._

_Cold water was pleasant when the environment was suitably warm. How marvelous._

"_My name is James McPherson. I am a former agent of Warehouse 13…and I am your ally."_

_His introduction told her many things. She had not been out of the bronze long enough to be anywhere other than the North American continent, likely still in the United States. There had not been much on the map where the new warehouse was meant to be built in her time, and she couldn't imagine that would have changed. The sounds of the outside world were urban, so she was in a nearby city. Chicago, perhaps? And his reference to Sumerian mythology was a strong indicator of the level of his education._

_But a subject of the crown as an American Warehouse agent? Had she not spent as much time locked away as she thought? Had only a few years passed?_

_And why was her savior estranged from the Warehouse? She knew, from personal experience, that those men and women listed as former warehouse agents were dangerous. She herself was, after all, a former agent…and knowing what her own plans were, she would be foolish to trust another such disillusioned person._

"_What year is it?" seemed the only logical question._

"_2010, Miss Wells."_

_Over a century in the bronze, then. So much might have changed. Progress was gaining speed in her time, like a locomotive engine streaking across a continent. By now, surely, progress had created the modern utopia of her richest dreams._

_Surely by now mankind had created for itself a world in which children were safe._

"_Forgive me for my rudeness, but I must…catch you up to current events, if you will. We have so much work to do if we are to achieve your goals."_

"_My goals?" Had they devised a method in which to listen to the thoughts of others in her time away? "Which goals do you speak of?"_

"_Why, your intention to find the Minoan Trident. To reset the world."_

"_That is a last resort, Mr. McPherson. I had rather hoped the world would improve in my absence."_

_There was a pause before the man spoke. "Did you really expect that human beings would ever change?"_

She opened her eyes, letting her tears free again.

The world hadn't needed to change. _She_ had needed to change.

And she had.

_But not in time._

* * *

><p>AN: I can't promise the next chapter will be up anytime soon, but I promise to do my best to get it done quickly. As I probably state ad nauseum, the sooner this is over the faster I can get back to my life.

I do want to take a second and thank those that have left reviews for all their lovely words. I try to never ask for them ask for them, but they are so nice to receive.


	9. Chapter 7

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

_**Part Two: Those That Carry Us Forward**_

_**Chapter 7**_

* * *

><p>That night was destined to be long for all of them, though each remaining resident of Leena's establishment tried to start it early. Claudia, having retreated after the earlier argument over Myka and Steve's remains, stayed in her room. Mrs. Frederic didn't linger long, and disappeared to wherever it was the woman hid herself when she wasn't around. Jane stayed downstairs long enough to realize there was nothing she could do to comfort her son, then retired to the only spare bedroom left in the house.<p>

Pete Lattimer, a man that Helena had never seen sit still for more than a handful of seconds at a time, hadn't moved in over an hour. She watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye from her spot by the window, resumed after she'd left Claudia's room to contemplate their next move. Myka had loved him dearly, and Helena knew he had loved Myka in return with every part of his childlike heart.

It would kill their mutual friend to see him so still.

She was inspired to give him some hope, to perhaps enlist his aid in an attempt to find a solution to their problems, but the moment she drew near to him he crawled backward in his chair and hissed like a scorned cat.

"What do _you_ want?"

It was not quite the reaction she was expecting.

"Listen, Peter...I want you to know that I will do everything I can to make this right. I-"

But he cut her off by standing abruptly and giving her a glare laced with all the hate and pain the man could muster.

"No. You don't get to tell me everything will be all right. What I said before still counts, H.G! You ruin _everything_ you touch! Do you even know what your betrayal did to Myka? Do you understand that Kelly not only left me, but left this town because of what you did to her?"

She wasn't prepared for his fury, even though she understood it...and deserved it. She had a weak apology on the tip of her tongue, but he continued before she could begin.

"It's not just my relationship that you destroyed! You destroyed _her, _H.G! And now she's dead because of you, too!"

He didn't wait for an answer, and she couldn't give one. He retreated to his room immediately, leaving her to stand alone in the sitting room long after he'd left.

Leena was last to go to bed, but she handed off a set of sheets and a blanket to Helena first. With them came an apology – she would ordinarily have a spare bedroom for her, but with both Steve and Myka gone, both their rooms had been moved to the warehouse, and hadn't yet been replaced.

She took the bedstuff and offered her most sincere thank you as she was shown to the study, but she knew that sleep would be nearly impossible on that leather couch, with her head in Myka's preferred reading spot.

The smell of the old, worn books mingled with wood oil and leather brought with it such visceral memories of a happier time, and filled her with regret. There had been so much to enjoy about her life as a modern Warehouse agent, but her fleeting moments of happiness left her with incongruous moments of shame as they passed, as if she had no right to be happy in a world without her daughter. Though she'd finally managed to put the past aside, resolved to make amends where she could, the smell of her favorite room in her short-term home pushed through all the emotional progress she'd made as a hologram and amnesiac and left her to drown in her own turbulent sea of emotion.

Myka had been her only tether to dry land in this world. Now, without her, she feared be swept away once again.

And Pete was right – it was all her fault.

There was a point in the night where she dozed off, lured into slumber by mental and emotional exhaustion. Behind the wall of her eyelids, on the stage of her mind, she was made to watch the events of that horrible moment once more. When she woke an hour later, Myka's name on her lips, there was no doubt in Helena's mind that there was no more rest to be had for quite some time.

She rose and quietly walked toward the kitchen, frowning as she passed the grandfather clock that tread only two in the morning. When she reached the kitchen island, she was both surprised and not to find Leena already there, a kettle on the stove and coffee brewing on the counter.

"Somehow, I knew you'd be the first one up."

"Technically, you were here first."

Leena smiled sadly. "I got more rest than you did. But...the energy in this house got too intense to stay asleep. You and I may be the first ones to wake up, but we won't be alone for long."

The hostess poured steaming water into a waiting mug and plunked a tea strainer filled with loose leaf Earl Grey into it, then handed the mug to her guest. "I'm sorry if the tea is a little stale."

"I don't believe it will be an issue. Thank you."

One thing that had escaped her in all the tragedy she'd suffered in life was any feeling of comfort from the company of others. Somehow, it had always seemed meaningless and hollow, a courtesy extended out of propriety rather than genuine sympathy. Leena had never been particularly friendly toward Helena, and though she had never taken it personally, the shift in her behavior was intriguing.

Equally intriguing was the genuine sympathy rolling off the woman like a tangible fog, and how it managed to warm her heart a little as the cup warmed her cool hands.

"Thank you," she said again, this time for an entirely different reason.

Helena turned her attention to the tea steeping in her hands and focused on its blooming dark depths. She was so focused that she was startled slightly when Leena placed a gentle hand on her arm.

"There's something I'd like to ask, if you don't mind. I think I know the answer, but I also think that it might be something the others need to hear."

Her nimble mind did somersaults attempting to guess at which question that might be. Many options presented themselves, but none seemed obvious. "All right," she conceded. "Forgive me for wondering why you might be so curious, though. You never seemed to like me before."

The innkeeper tilted her head. "I didn't. Your aura read like a horror story. It was terrifying to be near."

The former agent responded with a brief, hollow laugh. "All things considered, I fail to see how that might have changed."

"And yet it did."

Mysterious eyes roved the air around her from head to toe, meticulously examining some unseen detail. "Your aura is very different…even now, in such grief, the red rage that made it so hard to be around you before is gone. I know Artie refuses to believe you're capable of it, but I know you've changed."

"They're all afraid I'll attempt to blow up the world again."

"Do you blame them?"

Helena didn't hesitate before she shook her head. "Of course not."

"And it was Myka that changed you mind, wasn't it?"

She regarded the tea once more as she gathered the words to respond. The past was so very complicated, and it was especially difficult to think about now. More than anything, though, it was the enormity of what the woman had meant to Helena that made it so difficult to frame into such delicate things as words.

From the very first moment they'd met, Myka had done so much more than simply change her mind.

_She didn't recognize London._

_The sheer monstrosities that were modern cities was overwhelming. She was thankful for the development of mass transit systems and transportation infrastructures, but even with such engineering feats the modern city was burgeoning chaos filled with concrete monstrosity._

_Her home, once shared with her brother and her daughter, was very much the same, but at once very different. It was so unusual to stand within a place that felt so intimately familiar and be able to hear and see and smell how significantly altered it was. She had personally wired the home with electricity shortly before her departure, but hardly to the extent which twenty-first century convenience demanded, and the subtle hum of all the appliances and machines that electricity powered these days was maddening._

_The tourists, however, didn't seem to notice the differences or, perhaps, realize that the house should be different at all._

_She was at once proud and horrified that her home had become a sight of such historical note that visitors felt drawn to it, but with so many changes made over time, she honestly failed to understand what it was that those visitors intended to glean from their tour._

_Unlike those rather clueless guests, however, she knew exactly what she was there to find._

_Her study was, unfortunately, quite well trafficked. It would take a very clever excuse to commandeer the room long enough to retrieve her imperceptor vest. She had come prepared for drastic action, and wore magnetic boots in case she grew impatient and simply decided to pin her ignorant, impolite, unwelcome houseguests to the ceiling with her cavorite system._

_Helena was actively planning to do exactly that as she walked down the rear hallway, but as she neared the foyer once again, she heard the most amazing thing – the clarion voice of an American woman._

"_I told you we should've had this place closed and locked down."_

_Her stride hitched for a fraction of a second in an acknowledgment of the most beautiful noise she'd heard since her emergence from the endless black of bronze before she recovered and continued toward the tour group, looking around for more signs of modernization._

"_Naw, that'd be like shooting off a big flare. Hey, H.G, lookie here! We're waitin' for ya!"_

_The American male's voice was not unpleasant, even if it didn't seem very cultured, but his words confirmed her suspicions: they were Warehouse agents._

_She turned to face her pursuers for the first time, and it took everything in her to remember to keep moving and not lose herself in the other woman's beautiful green eyes. They both issued greetings or apologies, and the moment passed._

_But she felt the impact of the voice, of the eyes, and was acutely aware of the distance between herself and Myka Bering in every subsequent instant._

_James McPherson had provided some intelligence about the pair of them. She knew their names, their talents. What she didn't expect was how openly they operated, even in a foreign country, as agents of their government. In her time, women didn't hold professions, and so it would have been impossible for her to use any authority to gain access to the scene of a curiosity's disturbance. Her warehouse work was done mostly in secret, where they only hid the nature of their work and not the work itself._

_Later, after she had to regain access to her own home thanks to Agent Lattimer's foolishness, after she'd been forced to distract him with seduction, she found herself face to face with that remarkable pair of eyes once more. _

"_Okay, so...uh...H.G. Wells is actually a woman. I'm gonna have to process this."_

"_Yeah, well...make it fast, will ya?"_

_The American woman's familiarity with her own fabricated history thrilled Helena. Was she familiar with her work, then? Had she read those stories, perhaps sharing them with a mother or father as a child just as Helena had shared those stories with Christina? Did she enjoy them now, as an adult?_

"_And hey, could you please be careful with that? 'Kay? It's a Tesla, and up close it just might be –"_

"_Lethal."_

_Were all American men so very annoying?_

"_I know all about it. I brought it to the Warehouse."_

"_You what?"_

_Briefly, she wondered why they seemed to know so little about her. Surely there were records of her induction into the bronze sector. She knew from experience – albeit limited – that the airplane journey overseas provided plenty of time to catch up on the pertinent details of a mission._

"_I was apprenticed at Warehouse 12. Nikola Tesla and I met at the Chicago World Fair in 1893."_

"_Whoa. You are rockin' my world, lady."_

_It would take quite some time to become used to the uninhibited, childish nature of modern man, she mused. She tuned her attention back to Myka, bringing into her voice and tone a possessiveness that should provide ample reason for her presence in any time period._

"_Perhaps you'd like to tell me why you're ransacking my home."_

_The other woman's eyes widened a little. "Ransacking your home...well that has a distinctive ring-tone to it."_

_Helena's eyes narrowed – she learned much in her exchange with these younger agents, and had covered for her knowledge gaps quite well with clever flirting or deflection, but whatever a ring-tone was, it was a tactical variable she couldn't even begin to know how to defend against._

"_What does that mean?"_

"_It's an American expression that means...gotcha."_

_From somewhere to her right came perhaps the most ridiculous sound she'd heard yet in this strange time – a tinny recording of a deep brass instrument and a very poor vocalist mixed with lyrics she wouldn't have let her child listen to. She glanced in the direction of the noise, certain that the American agents had cued it somehow, but unsure of what it meant._

_It was enough of a distraction for Lattimer to escape her grasp and reach for the Tesla._

"_I'd hate to have to hit a sweet old Victorian lady," he remarked as he grappled for the gun, and for having the audacity to call her old, she put him on the floor with a swift kick to the jaw. _

_Before she could make her next move, however, she was brought to a halt at the point of a menacing-looking firearm._

"_I, on the other hand, have no problem shooting one."_

_It wasn't the gun that had stopped Helena – the woman before her had a much more effective weapon in her arsenal. It was her intense, completely disarming glare that had brought the older woman up short._

_As her hands came up in surrender, beaten for the time being, she was afforded enough time to appreciate Myka Bering for the progress she represented. This beautiful, brave, educated woman was everything she could have dreamed for in the future, everything she had hoped women would have the opportunity to become._

_That realization gave her pause and forced her to take a deep, calming breath. She looked directly into that flawless face, those intense irises, and felt the smallest spark of hope catch in her heart for the first time in a hundred years._

_Locked in Myka Bering's sights, she realized that the future did actually live up to some of her expectations._

_And in that painfully familiar green gaze, some part of her soul understood that she would never be able to move forward with her plans._

"Yes." The response to Leena's question was quiet, and her voice trembled even on the short, simple word.

Leena frowned, fidgeted with her fingers.

"What pushed you over the edge, H.G.? I watched your aura like a hawk, as much as I could from a safe distance. Yes, you had a great deal of pent-up anger, but it _was_ softening over time. The more time you spent with Myka…"

Her words cut off as Helena flinched involuntarily.

"I'm sorry…I'm sorry. It's just…you were adapting. You were learning to be happy. What made all that anger rush back?"

"I hadn't meant for things to progress so rapidly. The students, the ones that died in Cairo…they were never meant to open Warehouse 2. I knew of the traps, of the tests, but I did not have a way to navigate them. I might never have found one…and perhaps that would have been a good thing. Nevertheless, when they discovered the entrance, when they couldn't contain their curiosity…"

She shook her head. "I never should have expected them to, really."

Understanding lit Leena's face. "Their deaths caused a ping."

"And I wasn't quite prepared. I hadn't adequately covered my tracks."

"So you decided to follow through with your plan when you heard about the ping in Cairo?"

Helena sighed. "No…I wasn't set upon that course until we actually reached Egypt."

"What happened to change your mind?"

"I suppose a great many things. I knew it was a matter of time before dear Claudia found out who had paid those boys, and I knew that no amount of persuading would convince Artie that their deaths were accidental. And I…I did so hate the brutality of the world almost as much as I hated myself for my own failures, for the deaths of those poor boys. I was prepared to die with the rest of the planet, but I would die by the fire. The rest of the world was meant a chance at survival, should they be clever enough."

Leena's eyes widened in shock as she came to a conclusion. "You…you were suicidal!"

"Perhaps, in a way…some part of me recognized that the act of destroying civilization, such as it were, was damning. Despite any justifications, I would not have deserved to live should I have followed through with my intentions. "

"And now?" The innkeeper raised a concerned eyebrow at her guest. "Would you consider yourself better?"

Helena considered the question carefully for a few moments, sipping her tea as her mind processed and collated thoughts. "I suppose not, in the strictest sense. But this is a different case, is it not?"

Leena frowned. "Suicide is suicide."

"I would challenge that assertion. Both acts demand a sacrifice. Leena, you asked me if Myka was the reason I couldn't complete my plan. I'd planned for the fires to consume me, to burn me away from the world as if I had never existed, because that is the punishment I believed I deserved. She was standing a mere foot away from me. Had I attempted to destroy myself, she would have been lost to the inferno as surely as I. I would have made of her an unwilling sacrifice to my dark plans, punished _her_ for _my_ deeds. It was foolish to think I stood a chance of completing my mission with her so near. She didn't deserve to burn…she deserved to live forever in whichever world she wished.

"That is why I couldn't strike the third blow. That is why I couldn't pull the trigger. This world meant so much to her that she would sooner die herself than see it end. Who am I, a would-be destroyer of worlds, to live on in her world while she does not? Do I not owe this planet my life in exchange for hers?"

The other woman nodded, satisfied, but when her eyes went back up, they focused just slightly over Helena's head. At once, the displaced agent felt the presence of other people.

Pete and Claudia had found their way to the kitchen in search of something to help them through a restless night, and both of them had born witness to the former villain's confessions.

Claudia was first to react. She walked over to her favorite inventor and engulfed her in a hug. Helena could feel warm tears as they dropped without any acknowledgment to her shoulder, and only held the girl tighter as tears welled in her own eyes. They fell when, to her surprise, Pete walked over and wrapped them both in his own arms. Helena closed her eyes and gratefully accepted the silent apology that came with it.

"I just don't understand," the younger genius finally said as she pulled herself out of the group hug. "Why didn't Myka just shoot Sykes? If she had her gun out and pointed at him, why not just pull the trigger?"

Pete took the barstool next to Helena and accepted the cup of coffee that Leena offered him. "We're not trained like that, Claud. The only sure way to stop a bullet is to make sure it hits something else."

"I never had a taste for firearms." Helena whispered. "That's why I was so eager to introduce Nikola's invention into the warehouse. The Tesla is as effective as a revolver in every way, and with the added benefit of erasing the victim's short-term memory..."

Claudia's mouth quirked into a sad smile as she plopped down next to Pete. "An elegant weapon for a more civilized age."

"Why...yes. Yes, that's an excellent characterization."

"You can thank George Lucas."

With the trio properly caffeinated, Leena took the final seat at the end of the bar.

"I apologize, Agent Lattimer, for the harm I caused you and Miss Hernandez in the past. And to you, Claudia and Leena, for the chaos my actions caused."

Pete took a sip of his coffee. "You know...she would have probably bolted the minute I told her the truth. She thought I was a boring IRS agent. She liked that about me. She didn't want all my complications."

They sat together for a companionable few moments, each doing what they could to keep sleep and dreams at bay.

"Soo...what are you two planning? Anything I can do to help?"

Claudia looked to him. "You wanna help us bring them back?"

"Myka's my best friend, and Steve is a great guy. We should at least try."

"Count me in, too," Leena said.

Helena tapped a finger against her teacup. "I'd compiled quite the list of possibilities after Christina died. They should be amongst my notes in the Warehouse. Many of them were far too dangerous to consider, but some of them were simply unattainable in my time. Perhaps that has changed."

"Nothing has changed."

The group turned toward the new, harsh voice. Artie, looking every bit as tired as they did, threw his bag on the floor. "And you will not be allowed anywhere near that warehouse, or your notes, or the outside world. You're going to have one of us with you at all times, and you're confined to this house until the Regents decide what to do with you. Is that clear?"

Helena tried to muster some semblance of her usual indifference as Artie issued rules for her latest incarceration, but exhaustion and grief muted her response.

"Artie, don't you think you're being a little harsh? I mean, after everything we've been through I'm personally pretty inclined to just let her be for now."

Claudia's support was a relief, and the girl's dogged determination to find a solution to their mutual problem gave her such hope. Nonetheless, it all felt horribly familiar: the rage, the grief, the need to change the course of past events. She'd spent the last year bringing herself out of that dark place, only to arrive in it once more.

Artie's dark scowl was, in its own way, darker than that place. Helena had hoped the story of the world Myka had come from, of her actions in that overwritten past might have helped bridge that rift between Artie's scorn and his cooperation, especially given that it had been Artie himself that had set her on the fatal course. But that timeline was a memory, a story told by someone to whom each person in the room had relinquished some part of their heart.

"My old notes were thorough, Artie. There is so much to be gained if we can access them."

"Dream on," he hissed.

"Dude, Artie...you need to lay off." Claudia stood from the barstool and put herself between her boss and his least favorite person. "I need her help. Steve needs her help. Myka needs her help. Hell, _you _need her help."

"She can't be trusted! Can't any of you see that!"

"What about the help she gave Myka?" Pete came to her rescue this time. "And she agreed with me when I argued that the Janus coin had to be destroyed. Bad guys don't agree with the good guys!"

"Claudia, Pete..." He looked between them desperately before settling his hard eyes on Helena. "People don't change."

"But she did! Don't you see? And now, she has again! She was a good person before her daughter died, and she _changed_ into the bad guy."

"She's killed people. That's the kind of thing that lies dormant until it manifests itself in a murderous rampage! Oh, like the one she started with James and ended with Benedict Valda! A Regent!"

Pete's hands flew up in exasperation. "He sacrificed himself!"

"Artie...look, I get it, okay? I get that she has a history of being heinous. I remember what it felt like when I found out she was a bad guy, and I remember what it felt like to..."

The youngest one among them stopped to take a deep, shuddering breath..

"I don't know how you can stand there and honestly tell me you don't want to just _try_ to find a solution. How miserable were we without Myka last year? And she was just in _Colorado._ We have the greatest mind in a century on our side, motivated to help, and with a bunch of experience we'd spend a year gathering. We owe them both just a week of our best efforts, of our most awesome ideas."

Helena stepped forward, finally given the opportunity to mount a proper defense for herself.

"I know you have no reason to believe me, but you must realize that in this instance, I could not possibly have an agenda that does not match your own interests. I want Myka alive as much as all of you do, and each of us owes it to her to try to find a solution in the archives and our collective experience. Please...just a week. No matter what happens, I swear to surrender to your judgment without question at the end of it."

By some miracle, hr words actually succeeded in calming the raging man. He turned to Leena with a quirked eyebrow.

"They're right," came her simple reply to the silent question.

With one last sigh, he was beaten.

"Fine." he growled. "One week. After that..."

It wasn't necessary for him to finish the thought. The words were hardly out of his mouth before all four of them had refills and were headed for the door.


	10. Chapter 8

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

_**Part Two: Those That Carry Us Forward**_

_**Chapter 8**_

* * *

><p>The journals had been stored, per Artie's scrupulous specifications, in the Dark Vault with everything else the man had ever known H.G. Wells to touch. She had not been surprised to discover how entrenched the older man's distrust had become, but was disappointed in its depths.<p>

There was no inclination on her part, however, to blame Artie for his feelings. Rather, like so many other things of late, she viewed it as a personal failure. If she had managed to contain her fury enough to avoid giving that distrust any merit, many would things would be different. To his credit, or perhaps simply out of desperation, he had managed to push that trepidation away long enough to let them all search for a safe method to bring back their friends.

Like any good parent or steward, Artie would never admit to having a favorite, but Helena had seen the man interact with the Warehouse family enough to understand that though he loved all his agents more than he would ever show, he did actually have a preference.

It was Myka – reliable, steady, meticulous. She constantly toiled toward perfection – in procedure, in detail, in nuance – as Artie himself constantly fiddled with a trinket or an algorithm or a piece of music in search of that same goal. It was a symmetry he respected, appreciated, and even adored in a woman that he would have been proud to call a daughter.

In many ways that was the role Claudia filled, and Helena understood that the gruff Warehouse supervisor was just as deeply attached to the girl. In the three days since they'd collectively begun studying her old journals, the younger genius had made the man visibly nervous with some of her suggestions, and that panic in his eyes instantly flipped into a stabbing, wary glare directed toward his least welcome guest. Without fail, she latched onto it and gave it as much solace as she could without speaking. She had no intention of allowing Claudia to sacrifice herself in any of their efforts – Artie needed to know that the only person she would allow to be lost was herself.

"Umm..."

Pete drew the group's attention as he closed another notebook.

"I might go to Hell for this, but what about Jesus's burial shroud?"

"The Shroud of Turin?" Artie grunted. "It's a fake."

"What?" The younger man blinked, then scoffed a bit. "Not it's not! Wait...how do you know?"

"Because we had it tested about forty years ago. Thing's a tourist trap. The shards from the cross, however..."

Again, the irrepressibly cheerful man drew attention, this time with a hop and a snapping of his fingers. "Yeah! Those! Can we use those? Do we have those?"

Helena took the notebook he'd just set aside and thumbed toward the end, then pointed to a paragraph. Pete read it aloud.

"Burned as kindling during Thomas Cranmer's execution. Deadened his pain until the shards were completely burned up." He scrunched his face in disgust. "Ew."

"What about Orpheus's Lyre?"

The raven-haired woman turned towards Leena's voice. "It was a very, very attractive option, but I never was able to pinpoint its whereabouts. It disappeared from record after Warehouse 3."

Claudia tapped away at the keyboard for a few moments, then frowned. "And it's still gone." She sighed, then leaned back in her chair. "We're running out of options. There aren't many cases of resurrection in the database since 1899, and those that were reported were all really...uh..."

"Dark."

Four pairs of eyes focused on Artie, who sighed. "I'm not trying to discourage you guys, really, but if I could think of a safe way to fix this I would have."

They were growing desperate.

Exhausted and over-caffeinated, the four of them were no closer to a solution than they had been when they started. They all knew their clock was running out, and after the second day it became clear that the clock might unexpectedly expire if Artie's uncharacteristic indulgence wasn't enough to keep the Regents and Mrs. Frederic at bay.

It didn't help that Helena hadn't quite captured the scope of her notes when she'd suggested them as a starting point – there were dozens of notebooks to go through and research all over again. Unfortunately, none of her ideas were proving more feasible in 2011 than they had in 1899.

For her part, the former Warehouse 12 agent hadn't slept since that first night, and the physical weariness was beginning to wreak an emotional havoc on her. An all-too familiar anxiety was taking root in her mind, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to give into either the fear it brought with it or the exhaustion that had caused it.

But as her other companions slowly succumbed to the overwhelming demand for rest, she felt the pull of exhaustion and fear become stronger. The journal before her had been her last, the one with the most unpolished ideas. Of all the possibilities, they held the most promise for new leads...and yet of all the possibilities, they had so far proven more rash than reasonable.

But, she told herself, there had to be something...anything...somewhere...

_The night was balmy but pleasant. The wind blew the mist and salt air off the channel, using the Thames as a natural tunnel, gathering with it the lingering heat from an exceptionally warm summer day._

_It was well past nightfall, and the streetlamps had already been lit as Helena and her companion spilled out onto the street, laughing with one another, comfortable arm in arm. Her smile, wide and happy, reflected the joy she felt at the end of her marvelous evening._

"_This was such a splendid idea, Reagan," she remarked, laughter still in her voice. "We simply must do this again soon."_

"_Well, my dear, now that there is such a grand theater so close by, I vow that we shall."_

"_A promise and a rhyme," she remarked. "That is, perhaps, why I love you."_

_She looked on in unmasked adoration as the tall, dark-haired man let out an ungentlemanly snort._

"_Why, Mr. McGrath," she scolded, "May I not love you for your amusing use of language?"_

_He smiled, full lips drawing out into a playful grin. "My dear Miss Wells, you may love me for whichever quality you deem suitable."_

_She smiled again, as he was correct: she loved him for far more than his way with words._

_The Garrick Theater was a recently-hewn modern marvel, located quite strategically near the national administrative offices at Whitehall and only a short distance from Westminster Palace. It was terribly rare for the pair of them to find the time to attend the theater, let alone any other cultured entertainment. Helena's social status in her own right was slowly climbing. The young and charming sister of an up-and-coming author, she was no longer an unexpected patron of London arts. Reagan McGrath was a tall and handsome surgeon in residence at the practice of London's finest doctor, a rising star himself. His future was full of promise, and he had been welcomed into society immediately after matriculation, a mere three months prior. Their schedules, however – hers as an agent of Warehouse 12 and his as a student, then apprentice –had historically made it insensibly difficult to patronize any culture._

_Helena couldn't help but be proud of what they had both accomplished. Her companion and betrothed, Reagan knew everything about the great warehouse filled to the brim with strange and ancient curiosities. He was entirely accepting of her uncannily gifted mind, and adored her carefully crafted stories. She had listened patiently during his time in medical school as he reasoned through the mysteries of the human body and the science of biology. Their minds were perfect matches for one another._

_She would never have admitted it at the time, but she had fallen in love with the man the night they met._

_They waited on the corner of the cobblestone street under a flickering streetlamp for their coach to arrive. The roads around them grew hazy as a fog rolled in off the river, obscuring the buildings and alleys such that one could almost imagine they were the only two people in the world. The hush that fell upon London during foggy evenings was eerie, but comforting. As modernization continued throughout England and the world, the ambient volume grew, as well. In all her imaginings, she'd never stopped to consider how very noisy the future might be._

"_Perhaps we should find a place in the country," she suggested ruefully._

_He turned a skeptical gaze downward at her. "Please," he said. "I would never be able to wrest you from the city. You love it far too much."_

"_Much of the time, yes, but a country home would be a pleasant escape on occasion."_

"_Oh ho! A country home! My, but you do possess such lofty aspirations for our future."_

"_Our future is a shining beacon. One can only expect great things of it."_

_He pulled his arm free of hers and wrapped it around her waist. "I only expect that in three days, when you and I are wed, our future will be a wondrous place filled with love and happiness."_

_His was a face that was so easy to look upon. He possessed a lean but strong jawline, defined cheekbones, and full, warm lips, but of all the pleasant features on her future husband's face, his eyes were her favorite. Large and expressive, he simply didn't have the capacity to hide anything from her. They varied in color – from a medium brown to a pale mossy green, depending on his mood and the light. In them, she could see family, happiness, and a future filled with their many creations. More than any other quality, she could see the depths of his love for her shining as bright as the sun whenever he cast a look toward her, and she could only hope that whatever he saw in her own eyes was as bright._

_Her musings were interrupted by shouting from the alley behind them, then an deep, agonized cry. They cast one final, startled glance at one another before running toward the source. _

_Halfway through the narrow passage, obscured by a blanket of darkness, they found an oafish, burly man on his back, weakly grasping at the knife in his chest. Down the alley, at the exit, another man stumbled away from the scene._

"_My God!"_

_The man's plight became frighteningly worse as they neared him, and only when they'd come to a stop at his side was Helena made aware of how dire his situation was. Blood seeped through the gaps between his flesh and the knife at an alarming rate, saturating his grimy vest and shirt. His face was peppered with glass shrapnel, as if he'd been hit on the head with a bottle of spirits prior to being stabbed through the ribs. The man's brown eyes were open, but unfocused._

"_He doesn't have much time," Reagan muttered._

_He was an avid follower of medical advances, especially in regard to traumatic emergencies. He scrutinized reports written by battlefield medics for symptoms unique to cases of severe injury, and for techniques and advances discovered during the most critical of cases. She watched the doctor as he carefully prodded the injured man, taking care care not to injure him further. The compassion he held for the sick and suffering was one of the many things she loved him for._

"_Helena, I need bandages for this man. I hate to ask this of you, but might I trouble you to make something of your petticoat?"_

_She was in motion before he finished the sentence, making long, wide strips of the undergarment. Reagan took them from her as quickly as she could make them, wrapping them around the groaning man's torso and packing the man's wound around the weapon._

"_Should you not remove the knife?" she inquired at length, annoyed that her carefully converted petticoat was going to frivolous use._

_He chucked, but continued to blot the blood around the knife. "Recent reports from military field surgeons suggest that leaving a blade in until transport to a surgeon's tent may actually prevent a great deal of blood loss. In injuries such as this, it is often the loss of blood that kills."_

_Helena smiled and shook her head. Of course, he would have his good reasons. "We must see this man to a proper facility, then."_

_He was still wrapping the bandages when the patient's eyes finally focused, then cast downward toward the blade. Panicked, the man sat up, screaming and shouting and flailing until he finally found a grip upon the knife in his chest and ripped at it._

_They both tried to stop him: pulling the knife out was certain death. The man soon overpowered them both, fear and strength his allies, and with an angry shout shoved them both away before he finally collapsed again, the knife clasped in his hand, dead within a handful of shallow breaths._

_Helena pulled herself upright, eyes searching for her companion even before she came to her feet. She found him a yard and a half away, on his back._

_His chest was covered in blood._

"Reagan!"

She jerked up in her chair and gasped for air, as if she'd held it during her nightmare. Her heart was racing, and her cheeks were streaked with tears.

Inevitably, a body demands of its owner a period of recuperation, and she had run for nearly three days without rest. The ticking clock on their project – an enemy that was drawing uncomfortably close, had been her most frequently-cited justification for avoiding sleep.

The truth was, she feared the torture her mind would conjure while her thoughts were not her own.

Every time she so much as closed her eyes, Myka's final moments played against her eyelids just long enough to force them back open, just as they had in her dreams that first night. It had been painful enough to live through once, much like her daughter's death, but to have it come back to haunt her again and again was enough to keep her from bed until she simply couldn't think anymore.

It surprised her, then, that instead of reliving that day in the bronze sector, she recalled the final minutes spent with her long-lost betrothed so many, many years ago, a dream that had haunted her for nine months before it had finally left her be.

It surprised her that she would dream of that because that memory hadn't invaded her sleeping mind since the day her daughter had been born.

Helena scrubbed at her eyes and reached for the cup of tea by her open journal, and took a sip of it despite the fact that it had long ago gone cold. Her eyes skimmed the page she had fallen asleep on, re-cataloging and dismissing all the options she came across in an effort to dismiss the nightmare and stop the shaking in her hand.

She found success when she came across a tiny note written in the margin of one of the last pages.

For a long moment, she couldn't decipher her own writing, but when she finally made out the single word, she also remembered why it had been placed there and then so quickly discarded. By that point, her mind had been made up: she would be going into the bronze, and her plans were already set.

But there had been one final stray thought, one last idea that she'd noted briefly, researched lightly, then scratched out.

"I have it!" she shouted. "I have a solution!"

Those that had been asleep stirred, and those that hadn't been rushed into the office.

"You do?" Claudia asked, stifling a yawn. "Really?"

Helena pointed to the word in the book as everyone gathered inward. "Sumerians. The answer is in the Sumerian Mythologies."

"Whoa...slow down." Pete scratched his head, still fighting off exhaustion. "The Summary Whats?"

"The Sumerians, Peter. The first civilization. The inventors of the writing system. They had a myth about their underworld and the goddess Inanna, who had descended into the Underworld to visit a friend. There were strict rules in that place, however, and even a deity was not immune. She was made to die. But her servant pleaded her case to Enki, another god, who sent his own servants to the Underworld to restore her...with the Bread and Water of Life."

Pete frowned. "Bread is an artifact?"

"No...you're saying there was a recipe out there somewhere, aren't you?"

Helena nodded at Leena's summary. "I believe so, yes."

"And...what?" Artie's bushy eyebrows came together in a frown. "You expect me to believe that recipe came without a price tag?"

"You demanded of us a method by which we might succeed in restoring life without a cost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the story of Inanna's restoration to life, there were no descript consequences."

Her breath caught as the memories came flooding back – she'd come across the story of the goddess Inanna and her journey to the Underworld long ago. It was a story much like the tale told in Greek mythology about Hades and Persephone, except that Inanna had actually perished on her journey.

But in providing them hope, in giving them the details of the myth, she'd left one thing out – in Inanna's myth, much like Persephone's myth, the Sumerian underworld had a Conservation of Death law. One could _restore_ life without paying one in kind, but that life could not be released into the world of the living again unless another took its place.

Claudia caught Pete in her celebratory dance, and the pair merrily enjoyed themselves for the first time in days, but Helena caught Artie's skeptical look.

She knew he was aware of the omitted details, but his silence spoke louder than even his greatest booming voice.

It was approval...for now.

"Okay..." Claudia, temporarily danced out, started looking for details. "I follow the story, but how do you go from a myth to saving Steve and Myka? And what makes you think something's changed since back then that makes it possible?"

"The recipes for both were said to be on a stone obelisk, about seven feet tall. In my time, there was no trace of the artifact."

"Wait...stone obelisk with cuneiform symbols? An octagonal obelisk, maybe?"

Helena nodded. "Yes."

"We...oh my God, we have that!"

Pete tilted his head. "We do?"

"Yeah! In the Ovoid Quarantine! We fished it out of Warehouse 2 a few months back, and we just haven't been able to process it yet!"

If only Helena had been in a frame of mind to think rationally in Egypt. While scouring the floor of the ancient warehouse in search of the second half of the Minoan Trident, she had come across the very item. It gave her pause – she had always suspected the obelisk was in Warehouse 2, but she knew that was likely only part of the puzzle. The ingredients would require more research than she would have time to commit to.

She would shovel her way through the Sahara if it meant getting to that obelisk now. Instead, all she had to do was walk to the floor of the Warehouse, into the purple dome at the far right side, and interpret the symbols.

"Hold up. Let me grab the wireless camera."

"We have a wireless camera?"

Claudia held up a small Canon camera, then removed a tiny memory storage device from it. "They sell wireless SD cards now. I improved the range a little and hacked the firmware so that it'll detect where in the Warehouse the pictures are taken, then send that location data over with the photo file. I just finished a handy dandy new program that looks for those new files and figures out what to do with them."

"So..."

The redhead sighed. "The tablet will be translated by the time we get back."

"Oh! Yeah, that's wicked, Claud! You're a freaking genius! So what's the program called?"

"Uh...I sort of dubbed it The Librarian."

Pete reared his head backward. "You named it after a Noah Wylie made for TV movie series?"

"It was either that or Attic Rat."

"I think I like that one better."

Pete and Claudia left the office together, their excited banter bringing some much needed levity to the group. It left Helena alone with Artie and Leena.

"You know that I won't allow Claudia to sacrifice herself."

The Englishwoman nodded. "I have no intention of allowing her to do so."

"But she'll try."

"And we'll all be there to stop her."

"...and if you try to bring back something else, if you're set on this course and do nothing short of bring one of my agents back-"

"Artie. Stop."

Leena placed a hand on his shoulder. Artie glanced backwards at the other woman, then sighed.

"I know you have no reason to trust her, but if you cannot trust _me_, trust H.G.'s past actions. Think, Artie, of why she stands here with us today instead of lying in a grave."

For the second time that week, Helena was amazed by the depths of Leena's compassion, and she was grateful for the vote of confidence.

If Artie meant to say anything, it was cut off by bleeping coming from Claudia's computer. The trio rushed to the screen as, one by one, the pictures stared coming in and the on-screen text readout began translating them.

"Okay...this is definitely the recipe for the Bread and Water of Life. It says the ingredients must be made from the Tree of Life."

Artie stepped back for a moment, stunned. "Tree of Life?" he whispered. "Kaballah?"

"I believe I recall seeing it referenced as such in the Sumerian myths."

"Kaballah is a real tree?"

Helena wasn't particularly familiar with the level of faith Artie possessed, but was moderately familiar with Jewish tradition. It was no doubt a deep revelation for the man – to discover something you believed for so long was based on incomplete truths was akin to having the foundations below your feet give way, and it was a feeling Helena understood intimately.

His fingers flew across his own keyboard momentarily until he came across an article in arabic. With a few more keypresses, the unfamiliar alphabet was replaced with a latin character set.

"There's a dig site in the Tigris River valley focused around this giant tree embedded in a rock face. Archaeologists and scientists can't figure out how it's still alive given its distance from water sources, but they can't seem to find a safe way to get to the tree."

He leaned back and fixed his glasses. "This seems like our most probable location...but how can we get into a war zone in the Middle East?"

"I can get us there."

Pete and Claudia came back into the room. The techie went immediately for her computer and the data it was still pouring out as the agent continued.

"I still have some buddies over there. They can get us in, but it would be up to us to get up that cliff face."

"I might have an idea for that," Claudia supplied.

"What, jetpacks?"

The redhead grinned. "Not gonna spill the beans, Petemeister. It'd spoil the surprise. But I can get us up there and back down again with cargo, no problem."

All eyes turned to Artie, the final link in the chain of approval. Quickly, he cast his gaze back to his screen and the picture of a rock face attached to it.

"Well" he said. "Pack your bags. We're going to Iraq."

* * *

><p><em>AN: Do I have you thoroughly confused yet? Fear not: thanks to the amount of research that's gone into this and the final two chapters, most of it is written. As usual, I promise no timelines...but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I want this over with as much as anyone._


	11. Chapter 9

_Well...this one got long._

* * *

><p><strong>We All Have Our Time Machines<strong>

_**Part Two: Those That Carry Us Forward**_

_**Chapter 9**_

* * *

><p>At night, the bullets left contrails across the sky like streaking comets over the inky canvas of the stars.<p>

From their high ground above the river, just 15 miles outside of the city of Samarra, they watched as a firefight broke out some ten miles south of them. The area, one of the most volatile in the war-torn country, had seen an uneasy peace for months. The violence that painted the news had shifted its focused further south, back to Baghdad where the effects would be more widespread. Pete's friends – his _special forces_ friends – were happy to help him out, but warned that there were risks. Terror plots were escalating, and everyone was on high alert. Nowhere – not even a remote, arid rock formation in a barren countryside – was safe.

It took quite a bit of convincing before they were brought to an outcropping of craggy cliffs just north of the river. The small platoon led them on foot to the camp at the base of the tallest wall of rock.

They had arrived just after sunset. The tents, filled with scientific equipment and a week's supply of military rations, were abandoned.

"We're going to give you your space, Lattimer." Their captain was a tall, athletic man, just a little younger than Pete but far better built thanks to a military life. "I'm not a fan of this giant perimeter you want us to field around your little scientific operation. It's not safe. We won't be able to scout all these damn rocks, especially not after dark."

"I know, Riesing," he replied, "but believe me when I say it's important that you keep your distance."

"You make it sound like you're conducting some top-secret chemical experiment." The man frowned, his tanned face and dark eyebrows scrunching in concern. "Which you're not, right?"

"No," Artie replied quickly. "It's a technology test. It's just, you know, a _top secret_ technology test."

"You do realize we have clearance for stuff like that, right?"

"Believe me, Man," Pete said. "You really, really don't."

The captain frowned again, this time in irritation. His gaze darted toward Helena, to his right, and Claudia, standing slightly behind her, as if skeptical that it could be so highly classified if two civilian women were involved, but chose to say nothing about it.

"If you need us, you know how to get hold of us. If we need you...well...you'll probably know before we contact you."

The soldiers moved out, leaving the group to their plans and the vacant tents.

"They didn't even pack up." Claudia gingerly lifted a set of boxers that appeared to have flown off a line several tents over. "Dude, what could have spooked them so badly?"

Thirty minutes later, her answer was painted across the night sky.

The country had filled enough of the news lately that Helena, thanks to Emily Lake's curiosity for current events, was very aware of the kind of situation they would walk into. Iraq, despite its recent advances, was by no means a bastion of progressive thought. In fact, the region and its religious extremism stood as a shining example of the kind of place Helena would have once been happy to let freeze over. She was, of course, recovered from that bit of rage now, but like a drunk drawn to spirits, she couldn't help but be tempted by the idea of forcefully correcting so many misguided minds.

"Hey, you coming?"

Helena shook her thoughts off as she refocused on the inky trail before her. "Yes, sorry. Momentarily distracted."

"Well, pedal to the metal, H.G. We need to do this fast, and the longer we have a flashlight lit, the more attention we're gonna draw. That skirmish isn't going to last forever."

She cast her gaze back toward the battle zone. "Surely that is not an intended distraction."

Artie grunted. "No. Unfortunately, that kind of thing has been happening a lot lately."

"And since we don't have a lot of time left, we sort of can't wait until daylight. So..."

With a small flourish, the young genius presented each member of their group with a special set of glasses.

"They're sort of lightweight night vision goggles, except they amp up the ambient light _and_ autocorrect for image noise, so you'll be able to see like it's daytime in any environment that has just a little light."

She then stepped upon a metal platform.

Claudia had, indeed, rigged together an ingenious bit of technology. She had brought with her a portable, hovering lift, intended to assist the placement of heavy artifact crates on the upper shelves of the Warehouse, then get them down again if needed. She motioned the other three forward – Leena had opted to stay near the Warehouse and her inn – and pressed a button. At once, the barren, dusty desert floor was pulled away.

Their goal was a large tree growing out of the cliff above them, alive despite an observable lack of water and proper nourishment. Science failed to explain its existence, which left only one possible explanation.

"This tree has to be alive by artifact augmentation," Artie remarked as they neared. And Helena had to agree – the face of the cliff was solid and not particularly porous, and the dirt in her boots and hair and nose was so fine and gritty it might as well have been sand. The land might once have been fertile and populated but despite their proximity to the Tigris River, their position was well past the edge of the marshland formed between the great river and its twin to the south. It was amazing that any life form could survive in such a dry place.

Except that, as they neared, the tree took on characteristics that made it look _too_ real through their artificial lenses. The leaves were a brighter green than Helena had ever observed on a plant before, and the bark was too smooth, its few patterns too geometrical.

"Wait...I don't think this is a tree."

Pete frowned at Claudia. "It has leaves and roots. How is that not a tree?"

They reached the level of the tree's trunk and scrutinized it. Pete, in charge of bark samples, tried to peel a piece off, but only ended up bending the tool he was using to gather the sample. Helena noted with no small amount of disappointment that the tree bore no fruit or blossoms, which was instrumental to the directions they were meant to follow. However, there was something about the patterns on the bark that seemed familiar...something that felt like it must be important to their mission. She ran her fingers across one of the deep grooves as she pondered it, but the answer kept slipping through the tiny cracks in her mind like the fine dust that covered the land.

Artie prodded at a junction in the tree's grooves, but retracted his hand when nothing gave way. "There's something...off about this tree."

"Off? Guys! It's a tree!" Pete reached for a limb and yanked on it. "See?"

But as the word slipped from his mouth, the tree limb slipped downward and locked into a new place, like a lever sliding into a different position.

"Holy Zelda! No way!"

Claudia pulled on two more branches and squealed in delight as they slid into new positions. "It's a deciduous Rubik's Cube!"

Artie grunted. "It's a giant holly. Holly isn't deciduous."

"Also, not reconfigurable. I stand by my statement."

It took them some time to test out the limbs, to figure out what they were supposed to make of them, but at long last they discovered that it was actually more like a Rubik's Cube than Claudia's jesting comment had inferred – the branches were on a complicated swivel, and they all had to line up along the middle.

When they did, the limbs split between two sides of a sliding portal. Rock creaked and groaned and roared as it ground along its grooves, prompted to move for the first time in perhaps several millenia. Once opened, the tree granted them access to a stale, dark tunnel that didn't seem to have an end.

Helena lit her flashlight, creating enough ambient light to make their way along the passage, and entered first. She was followed quickly by Pete and Claudia, then a grumbling Artie.

"I don't get it," Pete whispered. "When were the Sumerians advanced enough to build a...a _tree lock_ like that? I mean, they didn't even invent paper."

"I don't know," Artie replied. "Something tells me this place isn't what we thought it was."

"You're tellin' me," Pete replied. "This place gives me the creeps."

"You're vibing? You're vibing and you didn't tell us?"

"It's not bad the way they usually are, you know? What I'm getting is all over the place." He shrugged in the dim light. "I didn't say anything because I can't really describe it."

Helena was amused by their banter, but her mind returned to the term "tree lock," and its accuracy. Whatever created that lock was guarding something. In her mind, it meant they were indeed on the right track.

They continued down the long path, the air around them cooling noticeably the further they journeyed. At last, they found a faint natural light ahead of them. When they reached it – the end of the tunnel – they collectively gasped at what lay before them.

The tunnel led deep into the rock, and far enough downward that they might have come back to the level of the desert floor again, then spilled out into a giant open chamber larger than even the Warehouse itself. Within it lived a giant garden, lit mysteriously by a glowing rock ceiling above. A clear, wide river flowed through the center of it, bringing life to the lush plants at the water's edge, as well as feeding the streams that nourished the rest of the garden.

In the center, just beyond the river, stood a tall blooming tree covered with tiny white blossoms and overflowing with berries.

"That has to be it," Artie said, pointing.

"And that would be the way down," Pete remarked, pointing to a set of stairs carved out of the rock to their left.

They descended the stairs carefully, arriving after several minutes at the garden floor. As her shoes met the grass below, Helena was immediately taken by how soft the earth was, and how the grass was plush and lively despite the environment outside their hidden cave. They started for the giant tree in the center, but the marvels along the way were endless. Never in her life had she ever seen such a contrary variety of colorful plant life, and never had she seen a garden as beautiful. In that place, there seemed an elegance to the chaos of contrasting life.

At length, they came upon the river. It was shallow and clear with a smooth rock bed, crossable via a handful of moss-covered stones.

"How does this river even exist?"

"Dudes, get over it! This place isn't called the Fertile Crescent because it's the world center of agriculture _now._ Nothing should be able to survive in this heat, least of all the Hanging Gardens, but the Babylonians figured it out somehow."

"But that was then. Now, there's an underground greenhouse with a natural spring somewhere inside it and the rest of this land is drier than British humor."

Helena balked. "Excuse me?"

"Yep, you're excused."

"Pete, we had to unlock a tree to get in here. Don't you think this place may have been built on purpose?"

"Perhaps to keep people away from the very thing we seek." Helena mused.

The river crossed, they were under the canopy of their mighty goal.

From a distance, the tree had been the beautiful centerpiece of their sheltered paradise. Standing before it in all its splendor, marvelling at its low-hanging branches and gnarled, aged trunk, it was truly one of the most stunningly beautiful things Helena had ever set her eyes upon.

And, oddly, familiar.

"An Elder tree? That species has never been native to this region."

"Yeah," the younger man started, "from the looks of it, it's a couple thousand years old."

"No, Pete – that's a species of tree. Sambucus nigra. And H.G. Is right – it doesn't grow here." Artie gazed up at the limbs and leaves and light for a long moment before continuing. "Pick as many berries and blossoms as you can, and snap off a few twigs and leaves for testing, but _don't mix them! _The leaves and stems are toxic."

They set to work, each with their own containment bags for large quantities of samples. Helena stepped toward the branches, ready to reach up and pluck the nearest clump of deep purple elderberries when she noticed that Artie hadn't yet moved from his spot. His eyes were filled with a mixture of awe and fear, and as she neared him once more, she overheard his whispered wonder.

"Kaballah..."

Not for the first time, she speculated how deeply the man's faith truly ran. He was rational, a scientist, and that perhaps made him less likely to follow strict religious teachings. However, the truly rational scientist must concede that there are things about the universe science simply failed to explain.

Arthur Nielsen stood before her as a man whose truths seemed to be shaken. She had seen it before, at the mere suggestion of the tree's existence. Standing before it now had to be at once exciting and devastating.

"It could be that they merely named the teachings after the object," she suggested, "not that the teachings themselves are inherently false."

"Or, it has its own literal meaning. This tree is _ancient. _Can it even die? Is this tree a physical manifiestation of the eternal Ein Sof? Could this tree really be-"

"A part of God?"

The man was silent, but Helena had long ago learned to take his silence as an answer.

"This place seems to be so much more than simply a hidden ancient garden. Look around! You can find bugs and small creatures, and perhaps larger creatures of we continue to explore, but do you see any damage to the plant life? Should not the grass look the least bit trodden? Should the leaf a ladybug rests upon not look a bit..._eaten_? And yet, you see no signs of the natural cycle of life. There is no decay here. No death."

"An eternal paradise." He mumbled. "Eden."

"Our biblical beginnings on this planet started in a place much like this," she continued, "and thanks to the fruit from a _tree,_we as a species were thrust upon the unsuspecting Earth. We seek from this tree the means to defy mortality. If this place is Eden, or the garden the Eden story is based upon, why wouldn't this tree represent the link between the eternal and the mortal?"

"Because...because if that's true, than this tree is the Tree of Knowledge, not the Tree of Life. It's the Biblical Pandora's box. This is where everything went _wrong._"

"This would be where life as we know it began! Don't you see? Our lives are filled with contrasting experiences...evil so that we may choose to be good. Pain so that we might appreciate pleasure. Hate so that we may - "

She cut herself off then, as the man before her lifted his eyebrow in surprise.

"I don't need to point out the irony here, do I?"

She turned away, toward the splendid tree. The light from the craggish ceiling above filtered through the leaves of the giant Elder tree, breaking it apart as a prism seperates light, sending shards of its brilliance to the earth below. It was warm, soft, and filled Helena with the same sensation that Myka's smile used to.

"This tree can be everything. Or, it is merely a tree, and there is nothing special about it."

He snorted in response. "That, I can't believe."

He seemed more at ease after their brief exchange, and they both continued onward. But before they reached the trunk, Helena placed a hand on Artie's arm to still his forward progress.

"I have been perhaps more fortunate than I deserve in life. I have loved three people so deeply I thought my heart might burst from it. And I have, in turn, lost each of them to strikingly similar and violent ends. Where the pleasure of their company alone has set my soul alight so many times, their losses have combined to create an equal darkness in my soul."

"So...what? You're warning me that this _is_ another scheme to end a world that isn't up to snuff?"

"No. _No. _This is a chance to save one of those three people that I have loved and lost. I know you have no cause to believe me...but you must understand how much Myka meant to me."

The man bristled a little, perhaps at the suggestion that Helena's feelings toward his agent were so strong, or perhaps at the suggestion that he had any feelings at all. He watched his nemesis carefully as he crafted a careful reply.

"I don't trust you. And I don't think I ever will...but we wouldn't be out here if I didn't at least believe that you genuinely cared for her. So for her – _for Myka –_ I'm going along with this."

He brushed her hand off his arm, then set about his tasks. After a moment more in the warmth of the filtered light, she followed suit.

Helena set her mind to work, finding the best specimesn of the berries, as described on the tablet at the warehouse. From the berries, they would make a wine – the Water of Life. From the blossoms, they would grind a meal and make the Bread of Life.

The particular species of elder grew natively in the countryside around London and sporadically inside the city proper. She'd never particularly cared for the taste of elderberries, but the beauty of their parent was undeniable. This was an unrivaled specimen – from flawless, bright white blossoms to deep green leaves and the darkest, plumpest purple berries she'd ever seen. Helena collected them carefully, cluster by cluster.

As she wrapped her hand around a particularly large group, the leaves above her head rustled as if a breeze had caught them, and that drew her attention, as there was no breeze. She lifted her eyes toward the limb just over her head and found those of a snake – no, an _asp, _she realized with horror_. _The serpent bared its fangs and, before she could remove her hand or cry out, struck.

"H.G!"

Pete's frantic shouting faded from her mind as she sank to her knees. Time slowed to a crawl as the venom worked itself through her body, and the garden world had faded away before she ever hit the ground.

"_Reagan!"_

_In the moment after she closed her eyes in the garden, awareness returned to her. A terrified voice she recognized as her own shocked her every sense into action. She stood alone, only yards away from one very still, bulky body and two more lively ones. A woman bent over a man dressed in a deep green Victorian-era dress, hand over his heart, darkened by blood that would not stop flowing._

_She recognized the dress and the men, and her heart seized as she watched her younger self try desperately to save the father of the child she didn't yet know she carried._

"_My love," he rasped._

"_Please, hold on. It will be all right, Love. Just tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this."_

_Despite his agony, he smiled. Weakly, he placed his hand over her own, over his failing heart, and lightly brushed the ruby ring on her right hand._

"_Be happy, Helena."_

_As his green eyes slowly slipped closed, as she watched her other plead for him to stay alive, a pain she had pushed deep into her soul roared into her heart like a surfacing sea monster. His meaningless death had left her an inconsolable mess, but soon enough she learned she was with child._

_It was the most fortunate accident of her life._

_With that knowledge came a purpose, a reason to push the grief away and prepare for something else. It was a defensive mechanism, but one with consequences: the rage was bottled and placed on a high shelf instead of destroyed by proper mourning._

_The night was balmy, but pleasant. The warmth of the day was still fading. But Helena felt ice seep into her veins as the memory became visceral. Though she stood well away still, she could feel the blood on her hand, the thin heartbeat beneath her palm. She gasped as his heart – the heart of the first person she had ever loved unconditionally - give one final beat, then stilled forever._

_And then she was overwhelmed by grief, as if it were hers to feel for the first time, and she sobbed aloud before she could cover her mouth with the back of her hand. The anguish had been so powerful, the heartbreak so wretched, she felt like she could never be happy again._

"_But you were, weren't you?"_

_The alley faded away, leaving her in darkness as the voice washed over her. More than hearing, she could feel the words, like a hiss across her skin. Helena turned, searching for a source though there was nothing to be seen, until at last she found herself in another familiar place and time._

_It took no effort to recognize the ruined living room of her cousin's house in Paris. She had spent enough time in another woman's body, repeatedly trying to save her darling daughter's life, that forgetting the details of that parlor would forever be a feat beyond her grasp. _

"_What is the meaning of this?" she shouted._

_The smooth voice, still disembodied, replied. "A test."_

"_Of what?"_

_There was no immediate answer. The sight and sound of a stocky middle-aged woman being knocked backward against a papered wall so hard the plaster cracked behind her head, then hurled against a wooden table with such force the table splintered into dozens of pieces was the closest to a reply she received._

_Fine, heirloom furniture lay in ruins everywhere, and the walls had been wrecked as heavy objects had torn through the thin paper and decimated the plaster beneath._

_The woman's body, occupied by her own spirit from another time, was sluggish to recover as three men gathered what remained of the riches of the room and beat a hasty exit through the rear door. She crawled over toppled endtables and an overturned writing desk to reach the far corner of the room, where a dark-haired child lay huddled in a broken heap._

_Helena wanted to turn away, to walk out the door, to escape this moment she lived over and over so many times in life and never escaped in a century of stasis. Like a moth drawn to flame, however, she couldn't turn away._

"_Oh, my dear, dear child." The words, her own spoken through a stranger's lips, were broken before they were ever given life. "I am so sorry."_

"_Sophie?" The girl's voice was weak, and Helena knew her darling Christina didn't have much time. She watched as her former self gathered the child into her arms and placed a mauled hand over her heart._

"_I'm here, Love."_

_Her child's angelic face was bruised, but beyond that little had been evident on the surface of the horrible trauma her daughter had suffered. It had all been internal injury – she had bled to death from the inside._

"_Tell Mummy I love her."_

_She had lost her daughter – in life and in her dreams – hundreds of times over, and each time felt like the first._

_But none of those experiences pained her as much as this one did. It felt real, despite her third person perch, and on the heels of Reagan's death, that deep seeded rage and bottomless grief was raw and fresh and unquenchable._

_She closed her eyes against tears, wrenched from her anew. "I love you, too," she whispered in time with her younger self._

_The smell of blood mixed with oil and wood faded away. The change registered because she'd found the pattern in this nightmare. Whatever the purpose, wherever the end, she was drifting through the tragedies in her life without paddles._

_Helena knew what came next._

"_A test of what?" she asked of the heavens with a quavering voice. "Of the depths of my sorrow? Of my sanity?"_

_She received no answer. Instead, a gunshot rang out so loud she felt it might have deafened her, and she was forced to open her eyes again._

"_Myka! No!"_

_Myka's knees collapsed first. They hit the metal grating with a hollow thud just before the bronzing chamber door hissed closed. And after that, there was no sound but the reverberation of her own frantic footfalls and her wildly pounding heart._

_She watched as her days-younger self caught her beloved agent's upper body before her head could crash to the floor. Her shoulders were stabilized by the other Helena's legs and one hand deliberately cradled Myka's lolling head._

"_You know what, it's better this way."_

_Myka's pale, half-closed green eyes were filled with pain and fear, and they searched for something above her desperately. At last, they found that mark, and secured the gaze of the woman that held her. In her many years as an agent of two Warehouses, Helena seen enough people die to recognize a fading soul. She had pleaded with the heavens before to save the woman in her arms, bargained anything in return. Now, helpless to do anything but watch as she lost the last person she loved beyond all reason again, she turned her reservoir of anger toward whatever entity had brought her to this hell._

"_You'll all lose something you care about, after all. Especially you, Miss Wells. Maybe now you'll know what it's like to have a hole in your soul."_

_It had irked her from the beginning that the man knew how best to manipulate her, but for all his study, it amazed her that he had he not realized that she already knew what that felt like._

_Myka Bering had filled those holes. She had brought light to a life that had forgotten what light was. He wasn't simply ripping a hole in Helena's soul this time. He was reopening every wound she had ever suffered, wider than ever before, and pulling with it that new, precious thing that her heart had needed to continue beating at all._

"_Go to Hell," came the response, an instant before the cryogenic coils flash froze him. The cruel smile he had been left with would be eternal._

_Her gaze went downward one last time._

"_Myka, it's all right. You'll be all right."_

_Tears fell as Myka struggled to breathe, and the sensation of a heartbeat beneath her hand came back to her once more. Below her, t__he heel of her palm pressed against the bullet wound in the secret service agent's chest, and eyelids fluttered over a departing soul as more pressure was placed on the wound._

"_Helena…"_

_The sound of her name on Myka's voice, weak and broken, was enough to pull a tortured sob from her throat._

"_Don't speak, Love. Rest. Artie has gone to find something to make this better. You'll be all right."_

_As much as she had pleaded with gods she couldn't see, as much as she had prayed that Artie would return with a solution in time, they were at the end. Myka's lips moved, but no sound came out – her lungs had failed, and too soon, her heart would follow._

"_Please, Myka. Please hold on."_

_When fingertips met her alterego's cheek, she felt them as well. Desperate for the warmth of that touch, she lifted her hand to search for another that weren't there as the Helena below her reached up to hold those fingers in place._

"_Stay with me…"_

_The light brush of cool fingertips disappeared just moments before the heartbeat beneath her palm stilled. With one last flutter of her eyelids, Myka Bering left her life once more._

"_Why must you torment me so?" she asked the heavens as darkness overtook her once again. The only thing that had kept her afloat in the last several days had been the hope that they could all find an answer and bring Myka back. She had been forced to feel so much remembered pain, but to experience it all again, concurrently...hope be damned, her heart felt too heavy to carry on._

"_Is it torment to remember your loved ones?" The voice hissed to life once more._

"_This is not remembrance," she said. "This is agony."_

"_Is love not pain?"_

_Her grief was morphing rapidly into fury, and it took everything she had left not to scream._

"_Love is never pain. Only in its absence can you ever truly be harmed."_

"_You would harm me now, yes?"_

_She had no immediate answer, and she wasn't sure she could ever articulate one. It was within human nature to wish to cause harm when harm is given, and despite the fact that the memories she'd been forced to relive were of events caused by some other force, the urge to find the voice and choke its life away was difficult to control._

"_Did you really expect that human beings would ever change?"_

_The voice of James McPherson brought with it the familiar surroundings of the modest loft he'd acquired for her in Chicago. The pleasant temperature of the modern indoors, the sound of traffic in the distance, and the faintest scent of mustiness that accompanied older buildings completed her transport._

_Unlike her other memories, and unlike the real event, she stood before the man speaking as herself. He looked not at a seated, blindfolded figure elsewhere in the room, but directly into her own eyes._

_It had been her great fear in the darkness that she would awaken to discover nothing had changed. Her plan was one conceived with great detail and caution, but such a course required that everything be exact, including the standards by which the plans went into effect._

"_I didn't," she admitted to the older man. "But I know now that my expectations of mankind are irrelevant."_

_The tall, thin man held a coldness in his eyes that had always made her wary of his intentions. It was the look of a man affected by an artifact. Her initial instincts had been correct – the man was dangerous._

_But not to her. Not here._

_Not yet._

"_You never really told me how you learned of my intentions, James."_

_She didn't expect an articulate reply. When she received one, she was duly shocked._

"_While I was still an agent of the Warehouse, I came across your files. I found them fascinating – I found you fascinating, my dear. Prior to that discovery, neither my partner nor myself had been aware that the great H.G. Wells was a woman. We spent days learning of your missions, reading your engineering notes, researching your tenure as an agent. And when we discovered what had become of you, we went to visit you in the bronze sector._

"_We were both very aware of your literary works, and you could consider us both admirers of it. For Arthur, seeing you in bronze was the end of it, an unfortunate conclusion. But I was not content. I had to know what truly happened to you…so I procured Edgar Cayce's spectacles so that I might see your thoughts."_

_If she had thought these memories a figment of her imagination, that supposition ended._

"_Edgar Cayce? I am not familiar with him."_

"_He was a…famous prophet, of sorts, who came to fame largely after your time. Whether his abilities came from his glasses or his mind is unclear, but the power remains in the artifact."_

"_What did he see?"_

"_Mostly past life experiences."_

_She frowned then, not quite sure what to make of the statement. "Reincarnation? He claimed it existed?"_

"_Yes. He claimed the information was derived of the Akashic Plane." A lifted eyebrow encouraged McPherson to elaborate. "You would recognize it as the Gestalt. The Collective Unconscious."_

_And that was, indeed, a concept with which she was painfully familiar with._

"_So you gained a familiarity with my intentions. Did you also happen to find that it was only my intention to travel down that path of destruction if this world deserved it?"_

"_I never believed the world would have any trouble convincing you that your plans for it were far less than it deserved. It appears I was quite correct, after all. If it weren't for Agent Bering..."_

_Her anger flared again. If intentions were action, the specter of the deceased man before her would have met a very bloody end._

_His gaze turned to his fingertips for a moment. "My dear, I perhaps saw more of your past than I should have. I feel it only fair to tell you that I also saw the reasons behind your incarceration."_

_She felt herself wince, but let no other outward sign of her feelings show. "And what did you see?"_

"_I witnessed what happened to your daughter…and her father. I am so very sorry."_

_Her eyes, dark as night, blackened to something far more dangerous. "You've trampled upon quite enough of my sorrow."_

_His mouth quirked a bit. "Edgar Cayce's visions extended deep into the soul, my dear. He was your soulmate, did you know that? I apologize if I have opened an old wound…I merely wanted to express to you that I am sensitive to your pain, and offer condolences I'm not sure you were ever properly offered."_

_Her expression softened, but her eyes remained cold and wary. "I suppose I should thank you for that, then," she said._

_They were silent for a long while, the not-James McPherson watching her carefully as she tried to reason the meaning of their conversation. In time, a single question nudged its way to the top of her mind._

_She couldn't believe that this...whatever it was could be anything more than a clever fabrication of her poison-addled imagination, but the question took on a life of its own. Before she could stop it, her lips released it into the wild._

"_If…past lives do truly exist, then I would expect that he was reborn again, or will be at some future date."_

"_Yes...yes, that's true. I didn't look very far, but I was given to understand that the two of you have met over several lifetimes, as several different people, and your two souls always seem to find one another. I was given only a glimpse of what you were like in other lives." His lips quirked into a smile. "And I'm rather a little jealous."_

"_Is it only our two souls that cross paths? And what of Myka? Christina?"_

_She longed for details of their past or future lives – who they would become, what their lives had been like or how astonishing their futures were meant to be – but she understood implicitly that, even if he had those answers, he would never reveal them._

"_I have no current or future knowledge to impart upon you, my dear. I apologize."_

_She wasn't sure what to make of that conversation, of McPherson's implication that she had already met and lost her soulmate. She wasn't sure she believed in such nonsense anymore. Whatever she had found with Reagan, she discovered she also felt for Myka. They were different people, and yet both had managed to slip into her heart before she had ever noticed them there, then make it their own._

"_This is what you wish to save?" The disembodied hiss returned._

"_Excuse me?"_

"_Love. You wish to save love."_

_In her mind's eye, she remembered not Reagan, not Christina, but Myka. She remembered the woman's glorious curls, and the way they bounced animatedly when she walked. She remembered the delicate smile that crossed the statuesque agent's face as she placed a small, carefully wrapped box in Helena's lap, of the warmth of her body as it pressed lightly against her own during a dance between bookshelves in the study._

_She remembered the unspoken emotion in her exquisite green eyes, just before they shut forever, and the utter failure of the English language to capture what it all meant._

"_Yes."_

_The darkness disappeared. _

"H.G!"

Her eyes snapped open, and as they came to focus, sensation began to flow back into her brain. She lay against something soft and cool, her hand was clasped around something rough, and somewhere behind her, the sound of rapid thuds grew closer. She recognized the view – it was their secret garden, turned sideways.

"I'm all right."

Her answer did nothing to stop the oncoming herd, but she turned her head into the cool grass and pushed herself upright, bringing the thing in her hand along, as well.

It was the giant clump of elderberries she had been reaching for when the snake struck at her. Quickly, her eyes darted back up to the tree, searching for the same tell-tale rustling that preceded the serpent's appearance, but the asp was long gone.

"What the hell happened?" Pete half-yelled. "One second my vibes were all over the place, then the next they go all bad and I turn around just in time to watch a freaking snake bite you."

"You saw it, then?" she responded.

"Whoa, wait. There are snakes here?"

"Of course I saw it. It was a big freaking snake!"

"Enough!"

Artie's outburst silenced them all. When they were finally quiet and still enough for his liking, he turned his scrutiny upon Helena.

"What kind of snake?"

"An asp, I believe."

"You wouldn't be alive if it had been an asp."

She hesitated to continue, but did anyway.

"I relived the worst moments of my life. And...I heard a voice. It said the bite was a test of some kind. Given that I am now awake again, it seems the voice was satisfied with my answer."

Artie's eyebrow lifted. "And that was?"

"I believe it was attempting to determine why I sought this tree."

The man's eyes widened as he furtively looked into the branches. "That means it's time to go."

Pete and Claudia protested, but did mostly as they were told. They combined what they had collected and left the beautiful garden the same way they had come in.

Helena gave no such protest. She understood Artie's trepidation, as she was beginning to understand what the place was.

The tree was already a crossroads of so many religious traditions. The figurative tree and the literal tree already shared a word between Sanskrit and Hebrew, and the myth they were in pursuit of held too many resemblances to another myth meant to describe the seasons from an entirely different pantheon of gods. The serpent in the tree, then, was another crossing of those ancient stories, and the tally of those stories that were proving true was becoming uncomfortably high.

Helena half expected something to chase them out, given her experience, but their egress was unhindered. All they received instead was the hiss and crackle of a radio halfway through the tunnel.

"...do you read? Lattimer! Answer your damn radio! Over!"

"Yeah!" Pete's voice echoed in the tunnel. "Yeah, Echo One, we read. Sorry. Over."

"Dammit, Lattimer...what the hell took you so long? And what's your 20? Over."

"We're, uh...headed back to the nest. ETA two minutes. Think we found a place with weak signal. Over."

The captain's voice sounded strained. "Fine. Prepare for immediate evac. Base is in chaos – the city was hit, and it's bad. We need to get you guys out of the country while we still can. On top of that, we don't think this position is secure anymore. Over."

"Base?" Claudia frowned as they reached the hoverlift. "Where is our base, exactly?"

"Baghdad," Pete answered. "If they hit Baghdad, that means they'll be shutting down transportation for a while."

"Which means we need to get out of here now or we'll be stuck here, and this stuff has a short shelf life. Got it."

Pete held his radio up once more. "ETA one minute. Out."

They came back down to the desert floor. Claudia packed her gadget quickly, and they careened down the hill toward the camp, where a humvee waited for them. But from behind them, from the rocks they had just emerged from, they could hear shouting in a language none of them recognized.

Bullets ricocheted off nearby rocks, not close enough to do damage, bt it was enough to let them know their time had run out. Captain Reising and his team helped them load gear, then they took off into the night. They would drive for an hour and board a military cargo plane bound for Germany. Only once they were in the air over the Atlantic, safe, did the three Warehouse 13 agents finally feel like the worst was behind them.

But Helena's experience in the cave left her full of warring emotions and conflicting feelings, and she grappled with them in silence for the rest of their journey home.

* * *

><p><em>Incidentally, I do have a playlist for this story that I think I'm going to go post in the Prologue. Better late than never, right? <em>

_One more chapter left...time to tie off some strings._


	12. Chapter 10

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

_**Part Two: Those That Carry Us Forward**_

_**Chapter 10**_

* * *

><p>During her confinement to the sphere, Helena had seen far more of Irene Frederic than she had ever wished to. In fact, from her experience as an actual Warehouse 13 agent, she wondered if being the personal property of the caretaker for a few months made her more familiar with the woman than Pete and Claudia. At first, still mad with grief, Helena had made many attempts to draw a rise out of her custodian, and never in any of those attempts had she succeeded in eliciting anything more than a raised eyebrow and Mrs. Frederic's characteristically stern tone.<p>

The ageless sage stood in the middle of Artie's office with her hands folded across her chest, present in time to greet the returning intrepid explorers as they cleared the umbilicus.

The woman looked…_ruffled._

That could not possibly bode well.

"Would anyone care to explain why every one of my available agents along with a Warehouse _captive_ needed to be extracted from a war zone on the other side of the world?"

There was silence as the lot of them looked to one another, as if trying to come up with a common explanation without discussion or rehearsal. They found their answers somewhere in the space between, and offered the Warehouse caretaker an explanation.

Simultaneously.

"Well, it's the Tree of Life, shouldn't we have—"

"You may do whatever you like to me in consequence AFTER – "

"If this really has a shot of working, wouldn't you want to know about it?"

"It's my fault."

At Artie's words, conversation and protestations stopped.

"I'm their boss. It was my idea. Punish me."

Mrs. Frederic's stern face didn't budge.

"Arthur, I have let a lot slide in the past, but this is over the line."

"Mrs. Frederic, it was an Elder tree. In the Middle East. And it was a very, very _old_ Elder tree in the middle of a garden we had to unlock another tree to get into. Let us play this out. If we're all wrong, fire me, throw me in prison, give me to the Russians, I don't care. But I'm – _we're -_ right about this."

He endured a long bout of uncomfortable scrutiny from his supervisor as she set about deciding his fate. Finally:

"And the instructions on the obelisk?"

Artie's eyes widened, as did everyone else's, but he took her question as an opening.

"It explicitly spelled out the steps involved with making what we need, and described that tree perfectly. It didn't warn us about the asp, though, or that complicated damned tree lock at the entrance."

The woman lifted her eyebrow, but said nothing. Her employee continued.

"Mrs Frederic...I know this sounds completely improbable, but I think we actually found it! I think we actually _found_ the Tree of Life! It...it was _incredible! _And now that we know it's there...everything in that garden could be an artifact. We have to go back, and we have to study everything, and we have to move it to safer place –"

"The garden cannot be moved."

Artie stopped talking for a moment as he tried to decipher the woman's meaning. Helena took the time afforded them to examine whether or not she believed the sage knew more than she was letting on.

"Well, of course you're right, I suppose. We're not really built to be a greenhouse. But all the same, we need to study the-"

"_Arthur."_

The invocation of his full name brought his complete attention back to his boss. Helena narrowed her eyes and spoke.

"You knew about the garden."

A lifted eyebrow was the immediate response, followed by a motion prompting everyone to sit. Pete, Claudia and Leena plopped down on the nearest convenient surface. The former agent sat at the table. The warehouse's supervisor, however, opted to simply stand in front of his desk.

The caretaker cast a look at her recalcitrant employee, then took a seat of her own.

"In your capacities as Warehouse employees, you have all long since learned that most legends and fairy tales are rooted in truth. The story of our beginnings has so many parts to it, spread across every culture on this planet, and in each creation myth there has historically been a piece of a larger legend, passed between warehouses since Warehouse One. It tells of a place that safeguards the inexplicable in nature, where our installations are meant to protect mysterious and dangerous creations of man."

"Wait," Claudia interjected. "When you say 'passed between warehouses...'"

"My connection with the Warehouse would not be possible were it not self-aware."

"Whoa." The young tech wizard cast her eyes to the ceiling as if suddenly wary of an omnipotent deity. "So...what? This place is sentient? It actually understands us?"

"Of course."

The last comment came from Helena, and escaped on a breath barely loud enough to be heard. She hadn't really believed that Warehouse 12 was capable of having feelings, despite the lingering aroma of fruit and her mentor's insistence that the scent was a sign of affection.

"You have smelled it, then?" Mrs. Frederic said.

"Smelled what?" Pete asked, suddenly alert. "Fudge? Do you smell fudge?"

"No." Helena looked back to the older woman as she turned to address the rest of the group. "The warehouse communicates using your sense of smell, and has since the beginning. The smells have always been the same."

The displaced Victorian smiled, then nodded. "Indeed they have. You can imagine my shock when I came across proper fudge for the first time in 1893. I was convinced the confections had been cooked inside an artifact. It took several reliable people assuring me that was its natural smell before I dared to try it." She frowned. "I never did like it."

"_The story_," Artie scolded testily.

"The garden...yes. I imagine you might each believe it to be the Garden of Eden, and as you happen to understand the Bible's interpretation of history, you would be correct. However, that story as it is told by the Warehouses is not the beginning of mankind...simply the beginning of the development of civilization.

"Three Mesopotamian explorers stumbled upon the Tree and its grotto, surrounded by plants that never seemed to die, and discovered its remarkable qualities. They brought their best minds to study the tree, and took up residence in the garden, living off its bounty for hundreds of years. Their efforts founded Sumer, and they put in place the first writing system.

"But the grotto was unprotected, and soon it was raided for its miraculous bounty. The three explorers placed a special species of asp within the garden to seek out those with impure intentions. What they didn't realize was that the asps would seek _them_ out if they ever harbored destructive thoughts. One of them – a woman – was jealous of the relationship the other two had, and eventually planned to exile them from the garden and keep it for herself, and so one of the asps performed its function, and she died.

"The garden was eternal, but when death was introduced to it, a plague was released upon the land. It caused the first great famine civilization had ever faced, and with such strife came war. To contain the plague, the Sumerians gathered the asps and the remains of the dead explorer and sealed them in a jeweled box, then enclosed the grotto and locked the entrance. The plague faded, and what remained of Mesopotamia began to develop into new city states. The two remaining explorers – one man, one woman – left their garden home, and eventually died natural deaths."

"Adam and Eve."

"As many traditions tell it, yes."

Claudia scratched her head as she leaned back against a wall. "But...what happened to that box with the asps?"

"It's in the Warehouse, Miss Donovan. _Empty._"

"Pandora's Box? _That _was Pandora's Box?"

"Indeed."

"So why was I bitten by an asp if they were removed? And why was it that I did not die immediately?"

"Perhaps they missed one. Or, perhaps, the garden itself developed its own safeguards. It probably sought you out due to your dark past...but whatever devils lay in your history, the garden was apparently satisfied with your intentions."

"So...we must never go back."

"No, Artie. No one must ever set foot in that garden again."

Her employee looked disappointed, but he nodded quietly.

"What would you like us to do, then?"

Helena watched Mrs. Frederic carfully as she seemed to consider the options.

In the months immediately after Yellowstone, she had scrutinized the caretaker's implacable face for some kind of hint as to her motives. They were long months filled with hard questions and harder answers. Not once had the woman's careful, emotionless mask fallen.

But for just a moment, Helena thought she could see past that impenetrable shell and into a heart that was as devastated by the losses they'd suffered as the rest of them.

"Continue with your plans. Keep me informed."

She was grateful for that small crack in Irene Frederic's armor.

"Yes, Mrs. Frederic."

Leena and Clauda walked to the computer to read over the process one more time, and Artie and Pete discussed the acquisition of the remaining ingredients.

"Miss Wells. A word?"

Helena stopped short of joining Artie and Pete in their preparations to respond to the other woman.

"Yes?"

"Do you still intend to go through with your plan to sacrifice yourself for Agent Bering?"

It didn't surprise her as much as it should have that the woman was aware of her plan. "Absolutely."

The caretaker inspected Helena carefully from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, as if she could read the woman's every intention from the tilt of her hips, the threads of her clothes, the strands of her hair, and the set of her face.

"Very well," she said at length. "Then there's something you need to be aware of."

* * *

><p>The process of creating the items they needed was uncomplicated, but the warehouse staff was meticulous in their preparation. They introduced the simplest, most ancient form of yeast they could find to the wine for fermentation and ground their own flour from imported grain. If this plan failed, they vowed, it would not be due to an overlooked detail.<p>

At last, with the ingredients fermenting and baking, they were left with several hours to dispense with before they were all to meet on the floor of the warehouse in front of the cold storage sector.

And during that time, everyone else seemed to be content distracting themselves in their own way, which left Helena unsupervised.

She was surprised that Artie hadn't personally tied her to a chair while they all waited, but rather than giving up the last moments of her freedom by lingering in the man's office, she decided to take advantage of her loosened leash to wander the aisles of the remarkable American warehouse one final time.

The place had never held the same old-fashioned charm as Warehouse 12, but what it lacked in history it made up for in dazzling technology and pleasant memories. During her parambulations, she traversed many aisles that she had once inventoried, passed many artifacts she had helped to recover in her time as an agent in either warehouse. She lingered below the Studio 54 mirrorball, a wistful smile on her face, and continued deeper into the warehouse.

At length, she found herself before an all too familiar platform, staring at figures that were at once familiar and foreign, and a cold shiver raked down her spine.

As an agent, she had never once brough herself back to that place of cold, dark memories. She liked to pretend she had no feelings on the matter, that because she asked to be bronzed she did not mind spending a century trapped within her own head. She told Myka, when the agent asked about it once, that she didn't remember what it felt like to be frozen.

That was a lie.

It was a lie that came back to haunt her the day they placed Sykes in the chamber and failed to complete the sequence fast enough, and her own private hell claimed yet another victim.

Her eyes scanned her former companions, and noted that the two people she had helped place in that hell were still there. The others, some added since her own time, looked every bit as cold, every bit as vicious as her two nemeses had. What had she looked like? Had she borne the enraged, half-mad set of so many of these burnished faces? Or had she succeeded in placing a mask upon her emotions and arrived at her seat on the shelf with grace and dignity?

As she came to the end of the row of statues, her musings ceased. The newest addition to the cupboard full of lifesized figurines stared back at her not with fury, but with a cruel, eternal smile.

No one should look as if being cast into the bronze were a victory.

Rage boiled to life within her like the eternal inferno, and the pain she had been forced to relive thanks to that devilish serpent's bite in Iraq amplified that hate three times over. She contemplated at once the many ways in which she could exact revenge upon the form before her, the many ways she could see to it that he died slowly and painfully.

She wondered what happened to a body after it died inside a bronze cocoon.

That ever-tempting wrath teased her, seduced her, ran inky, cool caresses over her blazing emotions. The urge to utterly _destroy_ the flesh inside the bronze before her was overwhelming, and the tantalizing promise of satisfaction and revenge evoked something so close to a craving within her that her stomach flipped.

She wanted Waler Sykes dead. He _deserved_ to die. And if she grated the world that simple favor before she departed it forever, no one would judge her until after she was gone.

She took a step forward, hand and fingers outstretched, intent on shoving the statue off its high precipice with every ounce of strength she could muster. Her fingers brushed the cold surface of the bronze for the first time, its smooth surface taking the warmth like a greedy, desperate lover, leaving her hand as icy as the surface she touched.

It felt as familiar as a recurring nightmare.

Her eyes widened, her pulse qucikened, and she withdrew her hand as if the metal had burned her instead. The adrenaline flooded her body, banishing the craven pull of retribution from her mind in favor of instinctual self-preservation. She looked again at the face of the statue before her.

Helena had lied to Myka when the woman asked whether or not she remebered what it _felt_ like to be in bronze. It felt cold, colder than any winter she had ever experienced, colder than her soul the night she found and dispatched her daughter's murderers. At the time, nothing frightened her more than the prospect of stepping back into the bronzing chamber.

No punishment she would ever devise would be worse than that, which meant that the man inside the statue was suffering enough for his crime.

She took several steps backward, physically distancing herself from temptation, and shook her head.

"Visiting old haunts before shuffling off, are you?"

Though the voice startled her, she was not surprised that Artie had come looking for her.

"Something like that."

"It's an...odd way to spend your free time."

"I didn't intend to come here. I was...drawn, I suppose."

She could hear his footsteps across the metal grating as he neared.

"You know, I wonder sometimes if leaving people in there makes them become part metal, and if that would make them become inorganic enough to be walking artifacts." He looked her up and down. "I certainly treat you like one."

"As an artifact? As something dangerous to be cataloged and contained?"

"Yeah."

She sighed, and finally turned away from the shelved to face him. "I do not blame you for that in the least."

He flinched a little, but that instant in which he let his guard down happened too fast for her to identify the emotion that slipped through. It looked, however, like some small trace of guilt.

Moments before, she had been prepared to spend her final minutes upon the earth killing another man. But she had more unfinished business with the one that stood before her, alive despite his naturally acidic nature.

"Artie," she began, "When I…killed…James – "

He bristled, but didn't turn away. "I really don't want to hear it, Helena."

His use of her name rather than her initials gave her pause. He had only ever called her that once, during a time when she felt like she was finally succeeding in breaking through the man's distrust of her. That he should use it again, now, warmed her the same way it had back then.

Maybe he didn't hate her, after all.

"No, I need you to know. I didn't do so lightly. He viewed me - and your agents - as expendable. He expected to have to kill one, if not both of them, in the pursuit of a plan I wasn't convinced was necessary."

"And so you decided to spare us that problem."

"Somehow, he knew my plans before I was brought back out of the bronze. There was no deterring him. Please believe it was my honest intention to protect you all."

There was a long moment of further, silent scrutiny. Finally, the man sighed and removed his glasses before wearily rubbing his eyes.

"You didn't have to kill him."

"He was happily giving me up. I expected that, though. I knew he didn't trust me."

A snort. "I can't imagine why."

"You know he would never have surrendered. And you know the plan he would have given you would have been worthless, with just enough detail to keep him locked up but alive until he could devise some means of escaping or gaining your trust. You would have had me, perhaps, but as you captured and re-bronzed me, he would have already received the information he needed to carry out _my_ plan."

His dark eyes softened a little as logic caught traction and began to roll through him. She could see how unwilling he was to admit she was right, but she could also see the realization the moment it came as it lit his eyes. Then, just as suddenly as it was there, the glow was gone again, squenched by his own careful control.

"Why did you tell me all this?"

"Because James McPherson is the only man I have ever killed in what could be considered cold blood, and I truly regret that I was not_...stable _enough to consider another alternative_._ I needed you to know that."

Helena didn't expect him to believe her words, but the man tilted his head to the side and considered her with a softer expression.

"You changed. How?"

"Myka was never part of my plan, Artie. I never expected to find a friend in this world. I expected to awaken to a utopia, and if I didn't I expected to destroy what I found. She complicated everything – this world is far from perfect, but _she_ was the very model of the kind of person I expected to exist in the future. I found in her something to save."

His expression didn't change. Perhaps he had already known that. Perhaps that was why he had asked Myka to stop her at Yellowstone.

"Come on," he said finally. "Everything should be ready. It's time to end this."

She followed him wordlessly to the edge of the sector, but paused breifly at the entrance. She was tempted to look back, to acknowledge the darkness that had haunted her for a hundred years, to take one final glance at it. Instead, after a handful of heartbeats, she continued onward without looking back.

She would leave this darkness behind to wallow in its own misery.

* * *

><p>They were met at the doors to the cold storage sector by Pete, Leena, Claudia, and Mrs. Frederic. The caretaker held a platter with the instruments of her mission.<p>

The procedure would be simple: the Bread of Life was to be placed over the heart of the deceased, and the Water of Life was meant to be poured over it.

Except it would not be that simple. Mrs. Frederic warned that there would be a reckoning of sorts before Myka could return. Helena wasn't sure what that really meant, but for some strange reason she was reminded of a video game Pete and Claudia had once played, and a sixteen-bit rendering of the end of time.

She took the tray from the elder woman, and nodded solemnly. The nod she received in return was an acknowledgement...and a farewell.

"So...Myka should just wake up when we do this, right? Then we can try this on Steve and all is right with our worlds again?" Claudia's excitement was obvious, and Helena had to put on her best act to smile convincingly.

"Something like that, I expect. Let us wait and see how this goes, shall we?"

"I can try this, you know," Pete volunteered. "I mean, we really don't know what happens to the person that performs the ritual."

The smile remained. "I assure you, Peter, I am prepared for whatever may happen, but...thank you."

Leena knew better. The woman said nothing, but the smile was one of acceptance and thanks. Helena inclined her head and finally turned toward the examination cart behind her and the sheet-clad body of Walter Sykes' final victim.

Myka's face looked flawless still, despite its sickly grey pallor. Though there should have been some sign of decay in any normal instance of preservation, she could find none, and she was grateful for that. The science behind their efforts was dubious, and although she believed this was the best chance she had of correcting the heinous wrong fate had dealt them all, there was no guarantee it would be biologically possible.

"Are you sure about this?" Artie's voice was gentle, low, and she turned her head to look at him one last time. In his hand, hidden from the others behind his back, was a tesla. It was comforting to know he was prepared should something go horribly wrong.

"Yes. Please tell her..." she turned to look at Myka's still face as she placed the bread over her heart.

"What? What do you want me to tell her?"

Her hand held the cup of elderberry wine above the bread. Helena took one last, long breath, and smiled.

The air carried with it the familiar scent of apples.

"Tell her I love her, Artie."

She poured the cup of wine out, and the moment the last drop hit the hard crust below, Helena felt something yank so hard at her heart it must have ripped her very soul.

Then the world fell away, and she was pitched into oblivion.

* * *

><p><em>She had long been fascinated by the television in the main room, how pictures were made to move with sound, as if the viewer were looking through a window to something that was actually happening. The Farnsworths, marvels that they were, demonstrated the clarity and quality of earlier technology, and there was simply no comparison between the screens on those devices and the enormous, colorful panels that projected these movies now.<em>

_The art of television and motion pictures was something she longed to study more, as their sheer interactivity was beyond the scope of anything imaginable a hundred years ago. The first time she witnessed Pete and Claudia engaging in a video game, she was enraptured by the idea that the lifelike images they controlled were, in fact, surreptitiously generated by a machine capable of millions of calculations a second._

_When they engaged in such an activity, Helena was always so fascinated by it that, despite her lack of interest in actually playing the game, she couldn't help but watch._

_One day, she found Claudia and Pete in front of the television, grey and purple controllers with long cords on them in hand instead of the typical black wireless contraptions. Claudia wasn't engaged in the game, rather she was curled on the couch with her legs underneath her, watching as Pete guided a very…_roughly-hewn_ character about the screen._

"_That is not quite the quality of your usual video entertainment."_

_Claudia smiled. "Naw, Pete and I pulled out his old SNES for kicks. There are some classic games on this old console that, really, they've never been able to beat. This one is one of them."_

"_Really? This form of entertainment is surely not old enough to be considered classic."_

"_Well, this console is almost twenty years old. The game is a little younger, I guess, made in about '95."_

_It was a kneejerk reaction for Helena to think of 1895 in such instances, and she smiled and shook her head as she realized that Claudia had, in fact, meant 1995. The girl would have been all of five when that game was released._

"_Well, what is the objective of this title, then?"_

"_It's an adventure game called _Chrono Trigger_."_

_Helena's eyebrows shot up. "Chrono? A time traveller's tale?"_

"_Why yes, Patient Zero, it is! It's got one of the best storylines ever in a video game, even if it's, you know, almost as old as me. And for sixteen bit music, the score is pretty good."_

"_Your current location appears to be a nineteenth century London street corner."_

"_It's actually the End of Time."_

_The older woman laughed lightly. "Darling, there is no such thing."_

_Claudia shrugged, then shook her head enough to get some of the bright red hair out of her eyes. "Well, apparently some Japanese game writers would disagree with you. Which I find funny, considering they probably got the idea from you to begin with."_

_She sat quietly for a moment and watched the screen. The figure moved about, guided by Pete's fingers, engaging in conversation with a man in a bowler hat under an old-fashioned streetlamp on a cobblestone terrace. The music was soft and well-composed, with nods to Bach and Mozart as much as some of the more modern musical geniuses that her marvelous iPod had introduced her to._

"_You're right, actually," she responded at length. "The score really is quite nice."_

* * *

><p>She was quite shocked when awareness seemed to return to her, brought about by the sensation of rushing air and a great, painful tug. It was as if invisible fingers had reached into her chest and pulled her, hard, toward her end. The Warehouse, the <em>world <em>hadmelted away into blending colors, collapsing into a winding tunnel of harsh red light.

_I'm going to Hell,_ she thought.

Her journey abruptly ended. The force released her heart, the cold released her body. She expected that, when she opened her eyes, some devil would be there to collect her soul.

Instead, she found herself alone on a cobblestone street in the dead of night. Dense London fog made it impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction, and what little she could see of her new world was illuminated by a solitary Victorian streetlamp. If there was any sound in the darkness beyond, it was entirely muffled by the fog. If there was any wind, she did not possess the capacity to feel it. There was weight to the fog as it settled in her lungs, but it, too, lacked the slightly mineral tang that typically accompanied the smell of the Thames.

As she neared the streetlight, she noticed that she was not, in fact, alone: a gentlemanly figure, dressed in a tweed suit and a bowler hat, was carefully leaned against the lightpole. He seemed familiar, though the outfit and circumstance threw her off such that his identity was not one she could immediately place.

"Miss Wells! How lovely it is to see you!"

It was his voice that made the reality of this new environment come into focus for her.

"Chaturanga?"

With a slight tap, he tilted the bowler above his eyes, and Helena had to suppress an unladylike shout of happiness as she embraced her mentor and friend for the first time in a century.

"Oh, Chaturanga! What are you doing in this place?"

"I should be asking the same question of you, my dear." His response was light in tone, but his face revealed the gravity of his meaning. "I am fulfilling my chosen role in this afterlife. I solve puzzles here, as I did when we were both younger and I was alive. But you, my dear...you are not meant to be here yet."

Helena straightened to her full height and declared her intent. "I'm here to correct a wrongdoing."

For a long moment, her friend said nothing. He simply searched her face with his dark, wizened eyes, as if he could learn everything of her past and intentions simply by gazing at her.

"You never were very skilled at accepting the realities presented to you."

"I prefer to believe we create our own realities."

"Hmm...yes. Which is rather why I'm here. Your determination to fashion realities after your own beliefs has created quite the puzzle."

Helena frowned as she considered his words, reminded of the warning Mrs. Frederic had given her before she left. "There is to be a reckoning, then?"

"I suppose that might be the correct term for it, yes."

She shook her head, still amazed that she would encounter someone so dear to her in such an odd environment...and that there should be an environment to greet him in at all. "This place is not at all what I expected."

"You expected a mythical underworld, perhaps, full of tunnels and rocks and paths leading to gardens of paradise and fire. You expected Elysium and Tartarus?"

"I expected...more, perhaps. People I've known, all around, and people I've never met. I expected to see..."

_Myka. Christina. Reagan._

"In my role here, I've seen many a soul pass through. They come and go and come through again, always in their proper pair. Their appearances change to suit the lives they've chosen, but they are always the same at the core. I can always recognize them by their eyes."

His words struck a chord, and something tugged at her heart. She knew her mentor meant for his words to be a puzzle – he loved them so much he had even used them as teaching tools, leaving small, buried hints in his words for her to figure out at some distant point in time, even if it was a century later.

Suddenly, she could not stop herself from asking all the questions James McPherson had no answers for.

"What happened to Christina?"

The elder man smiled. "Oh, my dear, you would be immensely proud of all she has accomplished in a full life. She has been happy, paired with that little boy down the avenue from your London home. Do you remember him?"

"Of course." She smiled, recalling the boy's sweet nature and deep blue eyes. "Of course I do. Christina was so very fond of him."

"With reason, it would seem. He, incidentally, grew to become a soldier, and saved many lives before giving his own to Queen and Country. A noble soul. They are very happy."

Her smile vanished as she worked up the courage to ask after another.

"And...Reagan? What of him? Did he find another love in another life?"

An inexplicably sad sad smile crossed Chaturanga's face. "My dear," he started, as if about to administer an apology, "Soulmates are paired. One does not enter a new life without the guarantee of the other's presence."

"Then...I _was_ his soulmate? My long life has prevented him from going back to the world?"

"I didn't say that."

The implication left her heart shouting something that her brain could not comprehend, and the language sounded like pain. But it didn't matter, not anymore. Her course was set.

"What is this place?" she repeated, changing the subject before she lost control of her emotions."Is this the Underworld?"

"You are merely at the entrance, my dear. The crossroads, where paths meet, cross, and part ways again. The place where you must convince Miss Bering to return to the world of the living from the world of the dead."

"But...I am here to offer myself as replacement. That is why she has been given the Bread and Water of Life."

"But she has already replaced _you_. Now, you have presented the universe with a paradox, and between the two of you an agreement must be reached before one of you may be sent back."

The reckoning, she realized.

The thought of seeing Myka again, one last time, was a relief she didn't realize her tortured heart had needed. Maybe she could take the time to tell her everything she'd never had a chance to say before. Maybe in those declarations, in that resolution, she could convince Myka to live.

"I believe I may never have another opportunity to express how immensely proud I am of you, my dear. You have taken an opportunity that none of your brazen companions will ever receive, and ultimately made your legacy one of mercy and virtue. I daresay there are no others sentenced to such a fate that would do the same."

Her thoughts returned to her mentor, and what time she had left with this other being she missed so much. "But I was different from the start, was I not? None of the others asked to be locked away."

"None of the others realized it was an option, nor would they have taken it if they had."

There was a hint of a puzzle in that response, as well, and as her mind grappled with the clues, another question she'd never been able to ask fought its way out.

"Chaturanga...why _did _the Regents agree to my request? Surely they realized that I would be conscious. Why would they agree to place me in such a state without warning me that I would – "

His eyes turned sad as the epiphany hit her – the Regents, for all their faults, would _never _ have placed anyone in the bronze, no matter how much they begged, even if they knew the whole truth about the state they would be left in.

They hadn't agreed to her request out of _mercy_. They had agreed to her request because she belonged there.

At once, she felt all the shame and guilt she should have felt then, for all her misguided actions and all her twisted justifications. She had felt guilty when poor Wooly lost his life at her hand, but it never should have come to that. She should have been able to control her rage such that those horrible men responsible for Christina's death were handed over to the authorities.

But she had always insisted on being extraordinary, hadn't she? And, in the end, it had led her to distribute the justice that should have belonged to the courts or God as if by right.

And then, after the bronze, she had continued playing the part of an absent and vengeful God, ruining the only good things left in her life in pursuit of a lunatic's revenge.

In a hundred years, her arrogance had not abated. And here, a mere year removed from that last demonstration of her almighty will, she stood again pretending to fit into the shoes of the gods, demanding that life itself be restored simply because she willed it.

The student faced her teacher, looked him in his stern eyes, and whispered the horrible truth.

"My God, I haven't changed at all."

"Yes you have, Helena."

The voice did not come from Chaturanga's lips.

Her heart – something she hadn't realized she still possessed – stilled at the sound, and her head whipped around to the fog as a tall figure emerged. It was a vision dressed in a loose white gown that seemed to shine of its own accord in the darkness, much like the light green of the figure's wide, intelligent eyes.

There was a stillness between them, then, a rush.

They surged forward, meeting at the edge of the mist, and for a moment they seemed on a path to collide desperately. But at the last moment they both stopped not a foot from one another and stared in open wonder at the woman in front of them.

Helena was not worthy enough to gaze upon the brilliant beauty that was Myka Bering's spirit.

"Helena...what are you doing here? Please don't tell me you're..."

"No...well, not yet, my dear. But...I hoped to trade my life for yours. I hoped that I could send you back to the living."

Helena watched, transfixed, as her mind processed the statement. She could read the tiny expressions on the other woman's face, the many hooks and stops it went through, and the emotions it caused.

"No. Helena, I gave my life so you would live, and I did it happily. The days after the Warehouse...after you..." Her eyes closed, and luminescent tears slipped down her face. "I won't go back to that world. You don't understand what it was like."

"Don't I? Darling, I watched you die, just as I've watched everyone I cared for most die. Yours is the final death I can bear. I have not changed. I still demand the universe bend to my wishes. I deserve penance in this place, whatever this place may be, and I would pay it for eternity to give you back to the world."

Myka reached out for her hands and grasped them tight.

"No...you don't deserve punishment, you deserve a chance at life! Helena, the world deserves your brilliance and your love. It needs your mind to move forward into a better future. You believe that you've played God, that in doing so you deserve some kind of punishment. I think you've been punished enough. You deserve to finally be happy."

That beautiful, slightly crooked smile was nearly her undoing. At once, warmth flowed back into Helena's body, and she could feel the softness of the skin pressed against her palm, the dampness in the air. She could taste the salt in the fog.

She could feel life coming back to her.

She had to stop it.

"Oh, Myka. Don't you see? I've lost far too much. I do not have any love left to give a world that robs me of my happiness each time I find it. My mind, my ideas, they are nothing without the right inspiration, and without you...without you, there is none.

"You possess the most remarkable heart, the most caring soul I have ever come across. The world needs people like _you,_ Myka. People like me hurt the world. You _save _it...just as you saved me."

A curiously familiar expression flickered across the taller woman's face, and the threads of a recognition Helena had been unable to place for ages slowly pulled together as that expression filtered into her eyes. Like a chemical reaction, like a supernova, the nameless emotion set off a familiar, gleaming light.

She recognized it then, and at once every feeling crashed in upon her. How could she have missed the truth those eyes carried within them? Why had she never noticed that familiar soul before?

How could she have ever let the grief of losing her greatest love and the child it had created blind her to the opportunity to be with that love again?

"Myka...I have mourned you for three lifetimes. To live another without letting you know how much you mean to me...I can think of no greater torture."

The other woman's brow crunched together in confusion, but that expression soon morphed into concern. "Then tell me. Tell me...then go back. Please."

"I love you. I fear I have always known that, and never had the courage to tell you. I've known since the day we first met that we were connected, and I should have seen it, should have realized what you were and reveled in the knowledge that you were alive and safe and happy. Instead, I let my grief consume me, and hurt the one person I have ever loved above all others.

"This is my chance to make it right, Myka. Allow me to give you everything I have left to give as an apology for never having given you everything you deserved in life."

Tears welled again in Myka's eyes, but not in joy. Rather, Helena's own heart fell as she watched sadness cast shadows across a flawless face.

"I knew we were connected," the taller woman whispered. "I felt it immediately, but I just didn't understand what it was. Sam was the only person I'd ever let close, and it was so different. I loved him, but the connection I felt with you was so intense I couldn't put it into context.

"And then...then you betrayed us, and I felt like a fool."

Guilt flooded her own eyes and obscured the form before her. "Myka-"

"No...no. I understand now. It took me so long to figure it out, to figure _you_ out, but it wasn't until the explosion that I truly understood what you'd been through. It wasn't until you'd died and I was made to live in that dark place where those things that make you happiest have been brutally ripped away that I could begin to fit the pieces together and finally see the whole picture.

"It wasn't until I could no longer tell you how much I loved you that I even knew how I felt. I loved Sam. There isn't a word big enough to describe what I feel for you."

Long, slender fingers reached up to wipe the tears away from the taller woman's face. The action lured another smile – small and sorrowful.

"Helena...I can't go back. I know what it's like to live in a world without you...and I don't _want_ to. I don't want to go back there. Please don't ask me to."

The Englishwoman held the American's face in her palm, stroked her cheek lightly as the last of her tears fell. They, like Myka's face, were warm. When a hand curled around her own, Helena was flooded with a warmth so wonderful it could only be love.

"One of you must go back," Chaturanga gently reminded them.

Sadly, Helena lifted her eyes to Myka's for one more long look at those green eyes she loved so much before she closed her own and sighed.

"Then I know which of us must go."

* * *

><p>Artie, Leena, Claudia, Pete, and Mrs. Frederic stood watch at a respectable distance from Helena's slumped form, and waited. Each of them was anxious for their own reasons. What if it didn't work? What if there wasn't a way to bring back Steve? What if neither of them came back at all?<p>

How long were they supposed to wait?

The vigil continued for a long hour, toward the end of which they cast each other skeptical glances. Helena's face began to take on an unnatural pallor, but Myka's body was no more pink and animated than it had been to begin with.

A panic began to settle like a fog over them. Had they sacrificed someone else to Sykes's schemes, after all?

"We have to pull her back."

"Dude, how? We have no idea how this works. She didn't even touch the stuff."

"She collapsed on top of it, Claudia! It's all over her chest!"

"Well, yeah, but she didn't touch it...you know...before."

"Quiet!"

Artie held up his hand, temporarily silencing the pair.

"Come on, Artie. That big stone thingy didn't say anything about not talking, and I think we need to start talking about this."

"No," Mrs. Frederic said as she tilted her head. "That's not why he asked you to be silent."

Another reply was on the tip of Pete's tongue, but then he picked up the faint sound of a metallic clang from somewhere behind them.

"Do you hear that?"

"Yeah...it's coming from..."

Artie raced in the direction of the noise, his boss and agents right behind them. They followed the sound to the metal doors of the cold storage sector just an aisle over, and wasted no time in opening them. As each backed away to take in the sight before them, each was made frozen by shock.

Before them - pale, shivering, and clad only by a thin white sheet - stood a very much alive Steve Jinks.

_/end part two_

* * *

><p><em>So...did you know that the game of chess is based on an ancient Indian game called Chaturanga? I'm completely not making that up. Personally, I never would have guessed that's how you spelled that name, but the reference is so perfect I have to believe it was intentional.<em>

_Also...yes, this IS the last formal chapter. I wasn't making that up either._

_Keep the faith._


	13. Epilogue

**We All Have Our Time Machines**

**_Epilogue_**

* * *

><p>"<em>What's past is prologue. What to come in yours and my discharge."<em>

_Helena turned her hand in Myka's and gave it a gentle, comforting squeeze. "What did you find, anyway?" she finally asked, returning to the original topic._

_The younger woman glanced down at the book, lifting it slightly. "G.K. Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles."_

_Helena's head fell backward against the chair as an odd look crossed her face. For a moment, Myka was afraid she had said something wrong, and that the melancholy would return._

_But then, very softly, she began to speak again._

"_All pessimism has a secret optimism for its object. All surrender of life, all denial of pleasure, all darkness, all austerity, all desolation has for its real aim this separation of something so that it may be poignantly and perfectly enjoyed."_

_Helena paused long enough to find and hold the younger woman's gaze._

"_The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."_

_Myka's heart dropped just a bit as the meaning of her words sank in. The captivating gaze retreated to the roof._

"_You're familiar with the essays, then."_

"_That one, yes. I had the privilege of reading it after Gilbert wrote it."_

_And then, the sadness did return, but something else flared to life deep within Helena's eyes, as well. It was a light, one that Myka had never seen there before, and though its growth was hindered by strands of sadness, it still managed to thrive._

"_We're in quite the melancholy mood tonight, aren't we, my dear?" The light held mirth, but was made of many things._

_It was made of the pain of losing something precious and important, stretched out to infinity, and the unquenchable hope of finding something beautiful despite the loss. It consisted of the fire in Helena's spirit splayed against the darkness in her soul. She could see the past reflected back, a lifetime locked up with grief over love that lasted but a fraction of that same time. She had that very thing, once, a love that was lost far too soon. It was different, yet familiar._

_After a few more moments, the darkness was pushed away completely, and the light that remained in Helena Wells' eyes was breathtakingly brilliant. But it didn't linger: Helena was far too stubborn to allow her own emotional barriers to come down for that long. In its place was something rich and warm, but only the embers of that inferno Myka had witnessed moments before remained._

_In the aftermath, the women simply stared at one another, hands clasped, content to let the space between them write its own story._

* * *

><p>Claudia was the first to move.<p>

In a motion so fast it could hardly be seen by the naked eye, she wrapped Steve in a crushing bear hug. Jinks was relieved to see her and happy to be back in the warehouse despite his unusual state of dress, but as her hug lingered far longer than a simple greeting should, the past began to seep back into his consciousness as her warmth slowly defrosted his body.

"What the hell just happened?"

He remembered the hangar, the office, watching H.G. Wells come back to herself from that coin. He remembered the halfhearted thank you that Sykes had given him just before Tyler's strangled cry of terror interrupted whatever else he meant to do.

A fight came next. He had knocked a gun out of Marcus's hand when he caught sight of a familiar red head coming up the stairs, then joined Claudia and Pete in fending the undead bodyguard off. It had been H.G. Wells that had found the box and stopped whatever device was inside it, conveniently stopping their adversary's heart, as well.

But by that time, Sykes was at the back door, and he had control of Myka through that riding crop.

He remembered dying next.

And then he remembered a foggy place with a cobblestone street and two very familiar people telling him to go home.

"I...I think Myka and H.G. Wells sent me back from the dead." His eyes darted from person to person as their shock deepened. "As strange as that sounds."

Claudia finally backed away, a poignantly familiar look on her face. He'd seen it in a Wyoming forest once, just as she thought he was about to kill her.

She looked betrayed.

"What? What did I miss?"

"She's dead? H.G. is dead?"

"I…" he looked to Pete for help, but he was just as stunned. "They didn't say much. They just looked…happy, I guess."

"I still don't get it. How are you even alive? We didn't give you the bread or the wine. Steve…you should _still_ be dead."

But Mrs. Frederic approached him, a platter in her hand, and bid him to eat and drink. He did as he was told…mostly because he'd crossed the woman once, and he was playing a role, and even though it was scripted, he never wanted to see that side of the caretaker again. He chewed on the tasteless, hard crust and drank the too-sweet wine, and the warmth that had left when Claudia pulled away came back to him. The greyish pallor of his skin slowly eased into something that looked a little pinker and alive.

His heart stared beating again, and it was in that moment that he realized that he'd been, for a few minutes, something like Marcus Diamond, an undead being.

"This job just gets weirder and weirder," he muttered.

"You wouldn't have lasted like that," Mrs. Frederic told him, as if reading his mind. He raised his eyebrow, but hid the rest of his face behind the cup of wine that was still slowly bringing his body back to life.

"Miss Wells was unsuccessful in convincing Myka to return to the world of the living, it seems. In her place, she selected an alternate."

Claudia set her eyes on her boss and curled her hands into angry fists. "You knew," she spat. "You knew it would cost her life, and you let her go anyway! You knew what they would choose all along!"

"Life always demands a price, Claudia. Always. And...I suspected, yes. They are two very stubborn people. The choices they've made already led me to believe that the process of bringing one back would not be so simple as switching places, and that in that complication neither would depart the afterlife without the other."

"But…but to lose Myka? To lose _either_ of them…the price is too high. Mrs. Frederic, I was prepared to die for the Warehouse. They should have left me there."

"Take no offense to this, Agent Jinks, but I do not believe the choice to restore you was made as a sacrifice. Rather, I suspect this was the only acceptable resolution those two could come to."

Steve finished the wine and set the glass down. Pete came to a seat on the cold cement floor, his head in his hands.

"So…that's it?" he asked. "We lost them both?"

Mrs. Frederic didn't reply immediately. She merely stood in place, wearing the closest thing any of them had ever seen her come to a smile, and breathed deeply.

"Do you smell that?" she asked.

* * *

><p>The pair of spirits stood hand in hand in their foggy refuge beneath the streetlight. Helena had no trouble convincing Myka that Agent Jinks needed to be restored to life, and when the solution was presented to the puzzlemaster beside them, he nodded his head in approval.<p>

It had been a rushed reunion, but it was for the best. Steve needed to live, and too many questions stood good odds of preventing that.

"What happens now?" Myka asked of their companion.

"The paradox that the pair of you created is at an end." He responded. "With that puzzle solved, I believe it is time we part ways. You must both travel your own paths. I must travel mine."

Helena let go of Myka's hand just long enough to embrace her mentor, and the older man returned the hug.

"I have missed your friendship, my dear," he said.

"As I have missed yours."

"Please do take care of yourself. And you, as well, Miss Bering."

Helena turned back to the other woman, hand outstretched. Myka's mouth was open to respond as she reached toward the offered arm.

Then, as if she were made of the mists that surrpunded them, she vanished.

In that horrible moment, she realized they had never discussed the nature of the afterlife, nor had they discussed whether or not this place of crossings would lead them in different directions.

"Chaturanga? What does this mean?"

He smiled demurely. "Goodbye, my dear. Be safe."

He, too, evaporated as the dense fog closed in. The darkness squeezed upon her place under the streetlamp like a collapsing wall, suffocating what little light remained. Her feet scraped against the cobblestone as she backed into the lightpole, placing herself as close to that waning flicker as possible.

Within moments, the fog swallowed everything, and she was pitched into a heavy darkness.

* * *

><p>The agents were all pitched sideways as the Warehouse shuddered. Metal twisted and groaned, artifacts and boxes shook and clattered, and light the mighty roar of a thunderclap, the Warehouse bellowed in protest.<p>

"What was that?" Arite asked suspiciously, eyes darting from shelf to shelf.

"On it."

Claudia rushed to the nearest backup terminal and, within a few keystrokes, had some answers. "Major artifact disturbance, Bronze Sector." She frowned. "How can a bunch of statues kick up a disturbance like that?"

"I suggest we find out!" Mrs. Frederic said, shouting over her shoulder as she raced to the source.

The group navigated the aisles until they reached the epicenter of the quake, finding a single overturned statue on the platform when they arrived. Walter Sykes's bronze form lay awkwardly on its head, the heavy bulk of the rest of him weighing down upon the weakest point.

"Oh, crap! The bomb!"

"No, we're safe." Artie held his hand out to Claudia as she rushed forward. "If that thing were going to blow up thanks to that little rattle, we'd be toast by now. _But…"_

Pete tilted his head awkwardly, matching his position to that of the statue in front of them. "That looks like it hurt."

"I actually doubt he felt anything. And…I doubt he'll be feeling anything ever again." Artie pushed his glasses further up his nose as he neared the statue. "I'm pretty sure our friend here is dead."

"I mean, I'm not gonna cry over him or anything," Steve said, "but…what? You expect me to believe the Warehouse killed Sykes?"

"Indeed it did."

Steve glanced at his boss and frowned, deeply concerned. "On _purpose_?"

The warehouse shook again, and Jinks cast his concern upward.

"You missed the whole conversation, Jinxy. Apparently, the Warehouse plays favorites."

"Great," the blonde agent responded. "Remind me not to piss it off."

Artie stood and backed away from the overturned statue, coming to a stop next to his supervisor. "Mrs. Frederic, what did the Warehouse do?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but instead pitched over in pain. As the Warehouse began to shudder one more time, the rest of the agents converged around the caretaker.

"Leena? Leena!" Artie grabbed the woman's wrist desperately. "Can you tell what's happening?"

The innkeeper shook her head. "No. She's different. I can't really read her like I can the rest of you, but…there's something around her that isn't usually there."

"Is it an artifact? Can we stop it?"

Leena shook her head. "I don't think so. I think this has more to do with her connection to the Warehouse than anything."

The shaking stopped abruptly, and after a few calming gulps, so too did its human connection to the world.

Artie, Claudia, Pete, Leena and Steve waited in silence for the woman to speak, afraid to ask for answers they weren't sure they really wanted to hear. Their fear turned to confusion, however, when the woman stood to her full height and genuinely _grinned_ at them.

"Well now," she remarked. "That was an unexpected turn of events."

* * *

><p>She skirted the edge of consciousness, aware of little, but slowly becoming aware of more. At her fingertips, she found soft fabric. At her cheek, a comfortable warmth. Her mind supplied the details of a bed in a room bathed in light.<p>

Perhaps she had found heaven.

Her eyes were sluggish to open, and part of her wanted to revel in the illusion she had created for herself for as long as possible. Opening her eyes left the possibility of disappointment. In her dream world, she could add whichever detail she wanted. The warmth beneath her cheek could be Myka's long body, sleeping soundly and safely in her arms. They could be at a beach, on an island, with a clear blue sky during the day and endless stars at night.

As sound and other senses began to engage, however, her dream world faded until she was forced to accept whatever reality she had been thrown into.

When she opened her eyes, she was disappointed to find at first blurred, grey shadows completely unlike the bright white linens of her imaginary sland retreat. After a few moments and several blinks, her new world came into focus, and she gasped.

She was in the Warehouse, in the exact same place she had left.

For a moment, she thought she had failed in her task utterly, not only leaving Myka to the eternal Underworld, but somehow failing to make her intentions to stay there clear enough for the ruler of that place to hear it. The thought left her mind as her brain engaged, finally. The softness at her fingertips was fabric – the sheet that covered Myka's body was pressed between her own palm and that of her friend's, their fingers clasped together. The warmth at her cheek had been the warmth of another human body, alive and whole and breathing.

And at the head of the table, where Myka's head lay in a nest of dark, thick hair, her sickly grey complexion had been repainted by a faint but lively blush.

She was alive. _Myka was alive._

As the realization washed over her like a hundred years of relief, the red lips of her sleeping beauty parted to whisper a single word.

"Helena."

A moment later, those beautiful green eyes opened, filling her own soul and every corner of her world with light.

* * *

><p>Warehouse 13 was a living thing, and all living things make choices.<p>

Mrs. Frederic had explained it to them all once they reached Artie's office. The Warehouse had sacrificed Walter Sykes to the Underworld to bring one soul back, and then sacrificed its own, in a way, to bring back the other.

Irene Frederic shared a special bond with the sentient Warehouse. She communicated with it on a level no other could. That self-awareness was transferred to her – she _was_ the Warehouse now, in spirit. The building itself would still have its safeguards, its "autonomic responses," as the caretaker had phrased it, and would eventually redevelop its personality.

But that would take time – centuries, perhaps – and she was to act as its conscience in the meantime.

"A life for a life," she had said.

The warehouse was a living thing that made its own choices, and like those made by humans, some could never be understood.

They could all, however, appreciate the gifts that those choices had given them.

The celebration lasted well into the evening. Leena cooked up a feast unlike any other, Artie cooked a dozen kinds of cookies, and Pete and Claudia pulled every stop in creating a proper party atmosphere. Even the mystical caretaker had participated, assisting the chefs in the creation of their wonderful meal..or, at least, watching them as they prepared it. The remaining three kept to themselves, each a little freaked out by the day's turn of events, but each more than grateful to be back amongst the living, in each other's company, and home.

After dinnertime, they each retreated to change into more comfortable clothing. Myka was the last to come back down. She'd taken a long shower, and a long look at herself in the mirror, surveying the traces left by her dances with death. There was a fading gash on her forehead from the rock Pete had thrown at her in Wyoming, as well as a few scrapes earned from running through the woods. These, in time, would heal and fade away.

The wound over her heart, angry and puckered despite being cleanly sealed, would probably never fade away.

Her finger brushed over the marred patch of flesh, tracing its roughness and texture, before she sighed and pulled a tshirt over her head. She was glad to be back, happy that all was set right and that Steve and Helena were alive again. But Myka would be lying if she denied still being a little haunted by the past, by the hours spent locked in her own memories at her windowsill, by the memory of shooting Steve and being shot by Sykes.

"Hey Mykes! Are you coming back down, or do we have to go up there and drag you out?"

She smiled to herself as she shouted back a response, and locked the memories away in her room.

She descended the steps quickly, noting the squeak of that third step as she always did, and was surprised by what she found below. Claudia had a playlist of very modern rock music blaring from some speakers attached to her laptop, keys clattering as she did some form of last minute work. Pete, no surprise, was eating cookies by the handful, chatting lightly with a refreshed-looking Steve while dodging Artie's attempts to get him to save some of the cookies for others. Mrs. Frederic seemed to have left, pulling her characteristic disappearing act. Helena was helping Leena pick up the last of the dinner dishes.

"Your ears aren't bleeding," she said, coming to a stop beside her friend.

"Quite the surprise to me, as well, darling," she responded, a smile finding its way to her lips. "Apparently my alter-ego was quite fond of the Foos."

Myka's head tilted at Helena's turn of phrase. Claudia laughed.

"Dude, I was as shocked as you are."

Pete waved a cookie. "Yeah…Emily Lake didn't seem like the type of person that would like rock music."

"Her tastes were rather eclectic, it seems." The former-Emily rebutted.

"Yeah, well, you dressed like a librarian." Pete frowned. "And screamed like one."

"Emily Lake had never seen a gun before, Agent Lattimer."

Pete scrunched his nose in disgust as his head reared backwards. "Okay, that has to stop. No more Agent Lattimer, no more Peter. Call me Pete."

Myka couldn't stop the grin that broke across her face. Even before Yellowstone, when they were all at their friendliest, Helena had never called Pete by his first name, and she doubted her partner had wanted her to.

Helena, for her part, frowned back. "May I retain Peter?"

"Nope. Makes me sound too stuck up."

"Or like a perpetual ten year old that flies around in green tights," Claudia added. "Come to think of it, that first part's right."

"HEY!"

Pete and Claudia began to bicker, and Helena produced a demure smile as they did. _You devious woman,_ Myka thought. She watched the scene for a moment, genuinely entertaine dfor the first time in what felt like forever, before placing her hand on the smaller woman's shoulder. When Helena's attention was caught, she threw her head toward the porch. "I think I want to go outside and stargaze for a while. Would you like to join me?"

"Darling, I would love nothing more."

They slipped out the back door, picked a dark, distant corner to block out light, and sat together on a double bench. The air was chilly, kept company by that slight bite that heralded a changing season. They drew closer to one another, sat so close together that neither was certain where one ended and the other began, but did not do so strictly for warmth.

"So," Helena breathed after some time, her left hand conjoined with Myka's right.

"So..." the taller woman drawled, smiling.

"This is nice."

Myka looked away from the sky to watch her companion. Her dark eyes were searching the heavens, but it was an idle study. She was being watched through the corner of an eye. The Secret Service agent tilted her head, wondering what it was that Helena was really looking for, and was rewarded with a secretive smile.

"It's not your style to make casual conversation."

Helena sighed and threw her attention back to the sky.

"I have always wondered what was beyond the heavens. I imagined when I was younger I might even explore them, touch cosmic dust, run it through my hands...discover what the very fabric of the universe was made of."

Myka glanced back at the glittering stars before settling her attention again on Helena's precelain face.

"What did you think it was made of? Green cheese?"

The question earned a short bark of laughter. "No, but they have these lovely radio telescopes now that have begun to sift through that stardust piece by piece in search of those answers."

There was another laugh, this one with less mirth.

"Imagine such a thing. Using nose and formless dischord to reason the meaning of the universe."

There was a hint of something tragis in nher words, as there was so often with the woman beside her. "It was hard, wasn't it? Adjusting to all our noise?"

Helena shook her head. "No. Not hard. It was _maddening_. Between the constant clanging of modern means and the wild chaos within my own mind, it was a wonder that I was able to think at all."

It had occurred to Myka that the world must _sound_ different when Helena had first arrived in her life. That concern was a very large part of what had motivated her to give the woman an iPod as a gift, and stock it full of an entire century full of music.

"And now?"

She felt the slender shoulders next to her own shrug. "Now it's part of life. White noise, as you would call it. I've learned to tune it all out. Though I must admit, I had never thought it would be necessary. In my vision of the modern utopia, nose was never a consideration."

Myka drew Helena's chin to face her with two fingers. "You can still create it, you know. You really do have so much to offer the world. You can do anything you want! You could just invent things and sell them, or you could write, or go work for NASA or something."

Her hand fell away from the other woman's face, dropping and landing over their joined hands.

"Or...maybe...you could come back to work here, and more or less do all of that in your free time, anyway."

Helena tilted her head as a wistful smile bloomed across her face. "Perhaps," she said. "I think I would like that. But I do also think I need to…gather myself, for lack of a better phrase. Take some time to readjust to being myself without some madman running loose bent on destroying the things I love."

"Where would you go?"

She smiled. "A beach, perhaps. A secluded island paradise for an extended holiday, with as little modern convenience as I care to bring and the sounds of the sea and the wind." Dark eyes darted back to green. "Does that sound mad?"

Myka smiled and pat her hand. "Not at all. Even normal people dream of getting away from it all sometimes. I think you'll get whatever you need."

"And…you? Would you come with me, if I asked you to?"

There was hope in Helena's eyes, a warm light that was such a rare and fleeting thing in the past. Myka had only ever seen it once, and then only briefly. It grew and flared and shined brightly, and it warmed her to the core.

That blinding light was love, she realized, and as her own heart was filled to the point of explosion with excitement and joy and wonder, she knew her own eyes must hold the same light.

Myka stood, pulling Helena gently from her own seat by their clasped hands. Tentatively, gently, she ran her fingers along her companion's jawline, awed by the searing heat that came from the small points of contact. At last, her palm came to rest against Helena's cheek.

"I would follow you anywhere," she whispered.

There had been, once, a moment between the two of them that was meant to teach a poignant lesson. The consequences of failing to heed that lesson, the consequences of leaving things unsaid between them, would haunt both their dreams for a long time. And beyond the demons of their past, beyond the memories of fire and blood, there would always be other hazards. Their lives were as dangerous as they were exciting. Through that danger, they had to resolve to live and love as if it could all be lost in a moment...because it already had been.

And even if they both survived to old age, together, one day it would be again.

Myka stroked her love's face lightly with her thumb before she leaned in to finally capture Helena's lips with her own. Some time later, when both women came apart for air, Helena tugged at their joined hands, leading them inside the now-silent house, through the dining room and parlor, and up the stairs.

The third step creaked loudly when they reached it, but through the rush of blood and the sound of her own fluttering heart, Myka never noticed.

/end

* * *

><p><em>Finally.<em>


End file.
